IMO Gibson ain't Pynchon by a long shot

[John Bailey]

Terrific post, Monte.

Reminded me of an old thought walk I'd forgotten having taken,
sometime around the BE era. For some reason I was reading Vineland at
the same time as two novels by Bret Easton Ellis and Murakami, no idea
which ones and I do recall they weren't very impressive. What struck
me was how all three kept constantly dropping brand names, and I
wondered why. It wasn't for historical authenticity - they weren't
trying to build up a plausible reality by slipping in historically
specific references. And I couldn't quite buy the opposite; the ol'
pomo argument about the replacement of the Real by the simulation, or
consumerism as the impoverished substitute for whatever religion etc
once promised.

Still not sure where that led me in the end, but I think BE continues
a line of thinking that I first found in VL. The (not really a
spoiler) party late-ish in the novel seems to offer a hint. Nostalgia
for that which isn't yet gone, or the sense that the present is
already a past, and vice versa. I'd say more but will wait until we're
done with the read, perhaps.

On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 8:12 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
> JT> [Gibson is] overly obsessed with fashion to the point of seeing fashion
> sense as a kind of moral force and profound insight.
>
> The same mental and social processes of emulation, alignment, evaluation --
>
> "What are those around me doing?"
> "What confers approval and status, what is deprecated?"
> "What explains the discrepancies between the 'is' I see and the 'ought' I'm
> taught?"
>
> are at work in the oldest Deep Moral Forces and the most transient fashion.
> To say "religion, philosophy and psychology are about eternal verities;
> marketing and advertising are about market-driven trivia" is to blind
> oneself with idealism -- and in my experience, to make oneself more rather
> than less easily manipulated by the latter.
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l