Horst-Maxine-Windust

[Paul Mackin]

I thought excluded middles were bad shit.

P


On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 4:44 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> David,
>
> In this instance, I am just quoting You on "bad TV"....
> please look up the meaning of
> "late capitalism" from any of the creators and users of the phrase, which
> TRP uses
> a couple--three times in Bleeding Edge...NOTHING GOOD about it (unless you
> are one
> of the heavy accumulators of capital).
>
> Money and Shit in BE flows directly from it in GR and ultimately
> (probably) Norman O. Brown,
> one of our shared favorites......do you NOT think money, excess amounts
> of, money not worked for
> is one of TRP's 'bad',  i.e. unpositive, i.e. negative, deeply satirized
> aspects of his historical vision?
>
> If you think I am too simplistic, know that I will always believe that TRP
> and other great writers
> will have a vision expressed in their books. The depth, coherence,
> insights of that vision are
> part of what make him or her great....THAT is what I mean when I sometimes
> use "bad" and "good".
>
> We readers have to judge from life and the work where the author's vision
> lies....
>
> In this example, I think I adumbrated, from the text, a decently complex
> character in Horst from
> BLEEDING EDGE....
>
> I still judge that TRP sees him, as we read the pages, as NO, overall, a
> symbolic embodiment
> of positive qualities----Alice started this thread with that word, I
> believe, and by saying he felt Horst was....."positive',
> that TRP's sympathies lie with him....He ain't even close to Embodying
> Cyprian's values, nor even a
> Traverses, nor Yashmeen's nor Maxine's.....who IS largely sympathetic in
> Bleeding Edge (I think).
>
> I want to thank you for steadily challenging me on my oversimplifications.
> It has made me think better, I think,
> and see P's values better---one of which is the richness of
> ambiguity.......
>
> But another is the clarity of his Swiftian excoriation....Vibe ain't too
> complex (but we knew that about many of
> TRP's characters) ....but TRP's vision is...i.e. complex yet visionarily
> "moral"...
>
>
>   On Monday, February 24, 2014 12:47 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>  Mark,
>
> Whenever you say that something (TV, late capitalism, etc.) in TRP's
> novels are "bad," and some other thing "good," you suck all depth away from
> understanding the depths of the dynamics being portrayed.  You don't seem
> to be able to get beyond these black lines & white spaces of a coloring
> book.  Don't be so eager for simplicities.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Monday, February 24, 2014, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, Ice resembles Vibe. I just threw him in to pile up the ways making
> money are seen
> in TRP's work. In this book of "late capitalism", money is deep shit, is
> THE major problem,
> it gets one man killed (at least)....
>
> Besides what else you wrote about Horst's character, thanks for continuing
> to make my case; Maxine--a reliable narrator in her judgment
> of Horst, it would seem...wrote about his silo-like emotional
> inexpressiveness...(I ask, is that a 'good'
> or even neutral quality in this book?, in TRP's vision)
>
> Adultery is a transgression, a betrayal of trust, against the spouse,
> without agreement. He hurt Maxine enough for her to divorce him.
>
> He makes money. Legally, with a skill. He's "nice" and interacts with his
> kids good-heartedly. Does he help Maxine with them in any real way, even
> just financially?
>
> He is not very sympathetic although, as the clichés go...."even So-and-So
> loved kids and dogs".....
>
> I see him as a representative selfish American....makes money, is not in
> touch with his emotions except for the sexual ones, it seems...and his
> fatherly and civilized 'niceness'............he watches bad TV.....like
> most of America, especially (?) the men....
>
> He is America, threatened by cutthroat web criminals who can bring down
> even his financial empire....bet he lost money in the Crash (of 2008).
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>
>
>   On Sunday, February 23, 2014 5:24 PM, alice malice <
> alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If anyone in this novel resembles Vibe, it is Ice, not Horst. Horst cheats
> on his wife. Infidelity is not a crime in NYC. She's no Mother Maxina. The
> family is, fairly typical of the UWS,  it functions in a dysfunctional
> world. That Horst, according to Maxine, once put his hands around her
> throat and choked her, and that he still loses it over trivial shit like
> the missing Chunky Monkey ice cream, is all I can find in the novel to make
> him less than Pynchon's most sympathetic characters. Dixon, for example, is
> far from perfect. His abuse of the females is not excused by his whipping
> of the slave driver. Slothrop's, Zoyd, the list goes on. Horst is a good
> father, a decent guy. And, again, his skill, luck, independence, and great
> fortune, are matched against he neo liberals, neo techs, the brave new
> world that has taken his trade, his job. So, again, he is more like the
> author than Max, who is, subjected to the harshest satire. She bends and
> takes Windust through her torn hoes. Like Frenesi on her knees. Horst is on
> a different vibe.
> On Sunday, February 23, 2014, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Alice, with all due respect,  I can withdraw my two lines supposedly
> summing up my view of Wall Street and the argument ( within the fiction)
> still stands.....my 'associative', descriptive leap " to the 1%"---simple
> fact re Horst; drop the Occupy resonances if you want, ....and the niceness
> of Wall Streeters is just a tail. " Niceness was to pickup on Morris's
> good-heartedness and simply to
> Say many of the very rich can be very " nice"....
>
> I brought out some textual NotNicenesses earlier.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Feb 23, 2014, at 2:25 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Mark,
> With all due respect,your view of "wall street" is superficial and
> distorted and so the conclusions you draw are ridiculous.
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, Horst makes money.....a 'wonderful' quality in all of TRP's
> fiction....one of his deep authorial thematic identifications. THIS IS
> SARCASM.
>
> Rich Horst cheated on Maxine. Rich Horst seems to have left Maxine with
> little (but the 'house") as they say.
>
> Horst can seem to sense where the money will be....like Jay Gould? Or a
> Vibe?
>
> Watching bad TV is TRP's way of saying he is his culture, mindless, with
> an "inhuman"---[in the sense his skill
> happens without much interaction with human beings...he doesn't make
> anything, create anything--even a 'team"]
> skill for getting rich. He is the 1%, with an overt "niceness"---why
> shouldn't he be? He is Wall Street.
>
>
>   On Sunday, February 23, 2014 12:44 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>  He is a very sympathetic character in BE.  He seems almost pure hearted.
>
>
>
>
>
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