Horst-Maxine-Windust

[Mark Kohut]

They are. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 24, 2014, at 5:53 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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