Horst-Maxine-Windust

[Doc Sportello]

or they not are


On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 4:43 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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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