BE icon from AtD era

[Monte Davis]

Suqalidozzi and Slothrop, GR 264.

" 'In the days of the gauchos, my country was a blank piece of paper. The
pampas stretched as far as men could imagine, inexhaustible, fenceless.
Wherever the gaucho could ride, that place belonged to him. But Buenos
Aires sought hegemony over the provinces. All the neuroses about property
gathered strength, and began to infect the countryside. Fences went up, and
the gaucho became less free. It is our national tragedy. We are obsessed
with building labyrinths, where before there was open plain and sky. To
draw ever more complex patterns on the blank sheet. We cannot abide that
*openness*: it is terror to us. Look at Borges. Look at the suburbs of
Buenos Aires. The tyrant Rosas has been dead a century, but his cult
flourishes. Beneath the city streets, the warrens of rooms and corridors,
the fences and the networks of steel track, the Argentine heart, in its
perversity and guilt, longs for a return to that first unscribbled
serenity... that anarchic oneness of pampas and sky...​'

​'
But-but bobwire,
​'
 Slothrop with his mouth full of that fondue, just gobblin’ away,
​'
that’s *progress*—you, you can’t have open range forever, you can’t just
stand in the way of progress—
​'
 yes, he is actually going to go on for half an hour, quoting
Saturday-afternoon western movies dedicated to Property if anything is, at
this foreigner
who's springing for his meal."



On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 9:50 AM, Doc Sportello <coolwithdoc at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks for that podcast. It was interesting. It reminded me of something I
> read, and I can't remember where I read it but I think it was either
> something posted here, or in Gravitys Rainbow, or maybe an article about
> Borges (I think my brain has simmered long enough to go back and re-read GR
> now) about Gauchos in Argentina, and the placing of barb-wire fences. If
> someone here knows what I'm talking about could you let me know where to
> find it?
> On Jul 25, 2014 2:51 AM, "John Bailey" <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Look at the magnificent chaos of all of those cars and pedestrians! So
>> many ways of singling up all lines that hadn't yet been imagined. No
>> dividing stripes or crossings, pedestrian signals, traffic cops,
>> median strips, keep left signs (probably keep right over there),
>> two-dimensional zebras, speed cameras, sharply defined sidewalks,
>> internalised fear of traffic, commercials reminding us of the
>> pedestrian's responsibility for their own life. Not against most of
>> these things but fascinated by the way they have crept into our lives.
>> The photo reminded me of a recently heard episode of 99% Invisible (a
>> podcast devoted to the hidden logics behind our built environment).
>>
>> http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-68-built-for-speed/
>>
>> "Long dividing lines and clear vistas give the illusion that you're
>> going at a reasonable speed..."
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 7:23 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > http://www.shorpy.com/node/18231
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
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