IMO Gibson ain't Pynchon by a long shot

[Joseph Tracy]

I do agree that these details have a  tremendous place in P's work adding texture, riff material from the comic to the sublime, and are simply integrated into his world view and style  in a fascinating way.  I personally like the way several writers use this kind of material- Margaret Atwood for example.  For Gibson my own sense was an obsession with status regarding pop culture and fashion. It didn't grab or engage me as anything other than a decent yarn. 

 
On Sep 26, 2013, at 9:22 AM, Monte Davis wrote:

> What you said. Pynchon's songs and movies and comix and advertising snatches
> --- say "rich, chocolaty, goodness," everybody! -- are no less central to
> what he's doing than his acknowledged Big Themes ---
> imperialism/colonialism, routinization of charisma, technology and its
> discontents, usw. 
> 
> Take Crutchfield and his little pard Whappo, the Norwegian mulatto lad. We
> hanker to parse them neatly into "this part is a towering moral critique of
> the theft of a continent" and "this part is pop-culture scrapings from a
> thousand penny-dreadful Buffalo Bill tales and Howard Hawks Westerns." But
> he won't let us.
> 
> "Not 'archetypical' westwardman, but _the only_. Understand, there was only
> one. There was only one Indian who ever fought him. Only one fight, one
> victory, one loss. And only one president, and one assassin, and one
> election. True. One of each of everything. You had thought of solipsism, and
> imagined the structure to be populated-on your level-by only, terribly, one.
> No count on any other levels. But it proves to be not quite that lonely.
> Sparse, yes, but a good deal better than solitary."
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Bailey [mailto:sundayjb at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 7:50 AM
> To: Monte Davis
> Cc: Joseph Tracy; P-list List
> Subject: Re: IMO Gibson ain't Pynchon by a long shot
> 
> 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 
>> JT> 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

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l