"Bin Laden May Not Exist"

Mon Jun 23 20:19:13 CDT 2014

Even the most self-conscious characters, like Ernie here, can't help
themselves from trying to solve their family problems with the Tube. As
I-24 explains in VL, the 60s folk never did get the Tube and it did a
number on them. But, I-24's knowledge of tube doesn't
Make any difference. Like Ernie, he knows, but he can't unplug it from his
life.

On Monday, June 23, 2014, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:

> And the young chaps who thought they are riding an endless wave that
> is now being harnessed by evil corporate giants are idiots and fools.
> The Internet, they imagine, is somehow something they have to save or
> keep safe, something like a possibility, an if, a what if they hadn't
> taken our LSD, man....kinda trip....like Van Meter....Mucho
> Mass....it's a drug trip that sends them simplistically spiraling
> somewhere over the brain bow. Nothing more.
>
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 6:55 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > The irony can't be ignored. Ernie is parked in front of the Tube. He
> > makes a connection with his daughter, not by going to the opera with
> > her, because she hates opera,  or by preventing her from watching cop
> > shows, because she likes cop shows and will watch them when he's not
> > watching her, or by getting her to watch the shows he thinks are
> > better for her, because she, like other young people, has a mind of
> > her own and besides, if he wants his daughters to think, to pay
> > attention, he has to let them make their own choices. Even if he
> > doesn't like what they choose.
> >
> > The Tube in Pynchon's minor works is not a Telescreen, not Big
> > Brother's weapon, but an amusement, an entertainment device that
> > distracts us from the things we need to pay attention to. It gets in
> > our dreams, our identities, our relationships. We are saturated with
> > TV.
> >
> > But it is not Big Brother, or the Inner Party that vaporizes the
> > citizens who commit thought crimes. We vaporize ourselves and each
> > other with the Tube.
> >
> > Ernie is smart enough to know that the post-60s Tube is propaganda,
> > endless prosecution and enforcement.
> >
> > He bans his daughters from watching cop shows.
> >
> > But it backfires. Or does it?
> >
> > He's not smart enough to figure out that the TUBE, the cop shows
> > didn't turn his daughters.
> >
> >
> > He's smart about politics and the tube but he's a very average parent
> > and grandfather.
> >
> > He can't figure out what went wrong with his family.
> >
> > He thinks its the Tube and politics, the times, the zeitgeist, Nixon,
> > Reagan.....
> >
> > So now he tries again with his grand kids. He'll feed then the right
> > stuff, the Tube that will make them pay attention, make them know what
> > he knows, keep them safe from the Ice Monsters.
> >
> > No chance.
> >
> > Ernie hasn't got a chance.
> >
> > It's sad and we want to feel for the guy. He's a good guy. But the sad
> > irony is that Horst is better father and his ideas abouyt the Tube and
> > Humor are far more important to the theme of BE than Ernie's tired and
> > cranky Lefty drivel.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 6:42 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> > <lorentzen at hotmail.de <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>
> >> No, no, no ...
> >>
> >> There are two hot issues in Bleeding Edge that never got discussed
> >> adequately. One is the Luddite perspective on the Internet which at the
> >> novel's end becomes obvious in Ernie's historical excursion to the
> roots of
> >> the Internet in the Cold War (pp. 417-420) and then in Eric's related
> >> diagnosis:"We're being played, Maxi, and the game is fixed, and it
> won't end
> >> till the Internet - the real one, the dream, the promise - is
> destroyed" (p.
> >> 432). Do note that these utterances are not downplayed with irony.
> Actually
> >> the opposite is the case. But nobody looks at them. This central aspect
> is
> >> neglected with the same sense of embarrassment as the novel's
> construction
> >> of 11 Sep ... "Foolish Pynchon, was this really necessary?!" Michiko
> >> Kakutani has occupied your brains, folks. And you don't even realize it.
> >> Bleeding Edge is not an anti-truther-satire. Not even in the case of
> March,
> >> who is not a ridiculous yet a tragic character. And the arguments which
> >> question the official version of the event come from a number of
> characters
> >> in the book. Horst for example is neither hysteric nor an idiot. He
> >> recognizes insider trade when he sees it because this competence is
> part of
> >> his profession. So it is not at all clear - though formulations here
> like
> >> "(t)he use of Conspiracy was examined" seem to suggest this - that
> Pynchon
> >> shares the official version that the attacks came as surprise. The fact
> that
> >> 11 Sep already played a role in Against the Day should make a detailed
> >> analysis of its treatment in Bleeding Edge a must. But no, no, here
> this is
> >> read as a merely atmospheric thriller ingredient, as if BE was fucking
> IV.
> >> Same for the Luddite perspective on the Internet. "Uuh, Pynchon wants to
> >> take away my toy, I rather ignore this ..." So instead of concretely
> >> examining Pynchon overall major theme --- TECHNOLOGY & CONTROL - in
> this new
> >> novel where we learn about the genesis of Cold War 2.0, you suckers
> write
> >> about shelf warmers like 'Neo-Liberalism' and even 'Late-Capitalism'.
> Yeah,
> >> how could one not call this a "fine job"?
> >>
> >> Rest in Pussyness!
> >>
> >> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1406&msg=180729&sort=date
> >>
> >>
> >> On 22.06.2014 17:17, Mark Kohut wrote:
> >>
> >> Well remembered and stated.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >> On Jun 22, 2014, at 10:03 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>
> >> I think we did a fine job with the political themes.  Neo-Liberalism
> >> and Late-Capitalism were explored in depth. The use of Conspiracy was
> >> examined. We discussed the family because it's impossible to ignore
> >> the fact that Pynchon's politics are played out in his fictional
> >> families.  In Bleeding Edge families have nice boys, good kids, given
> >> a great education...who turn out to be Ice Monsters...families have
> >> daughters they protect from the struggle they wage to keep their
> >> neighborhoods, who, because of cultural and technological forces (Tube
> >> & Co.) turn, not completely, but turn to power fascism....and so on.
> >> We discussed this at some length. Unless I dreamed it.
> >>
> >>
> >> OK, back to the game most Americans don't know is going down.
> >>
> >> Peace,
> >>
> >> Al
> >>
> >> On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 6:00 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>
> >> The interview sounds wrong to me in possibility and from the word '
> trendy'
> >> on. It has been disavowed by Ms. Jackson.
> >>
> >> "Late capitalism" in BLEEDING EDGE has been discussed. And the usual
> >> miscellany of other aspects, many of them 'political'. A key cultural (
> >> embodied politics )aspect of BE is what made many plisters dislike it:
> pop
> >> has totally won. Also pretty clear that money took NYC and in the way
> >> novels write themselves larger than their literalness.....
> >>
> >> And the future awaits anyone on the paths less traveled now on the
> plist.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPad
> >>
> >> On Jun 22, 2014, at 3:01 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
> lorentzen at hotmail.de <javascript:;>>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> What “Bleakhaus” couldn’t have known when he or she wrote this is that,
> >> while Against the Day (2006) may touch on 9/11 symbolically, his 2013
> book
> >> Bleeding Edge deals with it literally—it’s part of the book’s plot. <<
> >>
> >> Very true.
> >>
> >> Unfortunately neither reviewers nor plisters seem to be interested in
> >> discussing the novel's construction of 11 Sep ... They discuss Bleeding
> Edge
> >> as family novel and/or NYC novel. The basic political dimension of the
> plot
> >> has not been analyzed by anyone so far.
> >>
> >> On 21.06.2014 21:22, Dave Monroe wrote:
> >>
> >>
> http://touch.dangerousminds.net/all/bin_laden_may_not_exist_did_thomas_pynchon_give_this_9_11_interview
> >>
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
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