Laughter is sacred (BE340)

[Martha Rooster-Singh]

I disagree. Horst gets it fine. He gets that laughter is sacred. That grief
is sacred. That he's a fortunate man who was saved by his TV. He gets it.
No problem. And he gets that Maxine thinks he's just lucky and not all that
metropolitan and cosmopolitan. He gets that too. He doesn't much care to be
talking to Shawn and Heidi and the silicon crew. He's got his bets on. He
knows how to trade. How to score. How to have fun.

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 11:06 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Horst only gets the laugh......yes, it is a "profound insight" let's say
> but Horst doesn't get the rest of
> what you write........
> Horst is part of the problem.
>
>
>   On Monday, January 6, 2014 9:12 AM, Martha Rooster-Singh <
> martharoostersingh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why does P give this profopund insight to Horst?
>
>
>
>
> If BE is what has been called a satire, not in the mode of GR (GR may be
> considered, and has been by several critcs, and with success, a Menippean
> Satire, an Anatomy, a Encyclopedic Narrative, Postmodern non-corrective
> Satire), but what is called "light-hearted satire", we should do well to
> give our attention to Horst's claim that laughter is sacred. Laughter, of
> course, is not essenatial to satire, and, is not its goal. In fact, as
> Horst explains, so much that is called humor is a sacralization of the
> profane consumer laugh track or  the mere use of satirical tools of irony,
> parody, and the like.
>
> BE is not meant to be a funny book. I may make us laugh, or smile, but
> rarely LOL, because it is light-hearted satire that seeks to humor us out
> of our collective paranoia and call attention to what we have
> made sacred----9-11, that Survivor Tree, the Flag, the Wars.
>
>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20140106/501568e3/attachment.html>