"Bin Laden May Not Exist" // dfw anent tv

Thu Jun 26 09:00:30 CDT 2014

On rereading the DFW essay, I wish he'd considered one technical,
"mechanical" aspect. For the first fifty years of TV in the US, and even
today for those who don't watch primarily cable or recorded broadcasts,
whatever we watch is interrupted every 7/10/12/15 minutes by commercials.

I don't mean to invoke the grand discourse of consumerism. I don't mean
advertisers' deliberate influence on program content. I mean that two
generations of TV writers, directors and performers have taken it for
granted that whatever effect they're after has to be reached via blocks
that short, often with "stings" of plot or action or theme at the end of
each. More subtly, those "stings" can't be *too* strong -- because there's
been steady evolutionary pressure in favor of leaving the audience in a
mild, shallow, receptive trance for the ads, rather than strongly moved and
preoccupied by whatever they saw just before this word from our sponsors.

Think about what that simple, all-pervasive constraint does to the rhythms
of story telling and character building, to the scope of their cumulative
effect. Think about the self-congratulatory reverence with which
broadcasters tell us they'll be presenting some highbrow special or
first-broadcast movie "without commercial interruption" -- and what that
implies about the other 99.7% of what they offer.

Certainly this has come up over the years in many comparisons between
movies and TV, and I've seen it mentioned several times in discussions of
the current, cable-driven "golden age of long-form TV." But isn't it also
an important, tacit presupposition or boundary condition for a good deal of
what DFW says about HOW we watch TV? The frame of mind we bring to it?
There are stories we might tell each other over a leisurely meal or on a
long walk. They are not the same stories we tell in the break room at the
workplace, or at home with children running in and out of the room, or
while pushing shopping carts down a supermarket aisle. How a performance is
"chunked" systematically affects its aesthetics and its reception, entirely
aside from the content and cultural context of the interruptions.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 3:37 AM, Michael Bailey <mikebailey at gmx.us> wrote:

> Despite my complaints of anhedonia in infinite jest (my posts on the
> matter back in ought-something seguing into the notion that that's a
> feature rather than a bug, of course, but eventually taking gentle
> exception to the feature, which I felt really bad about after his demise,
> wondering what if he was as sad as his characters? What if he read the
> P-list and felt unloved? What if he worried about stuff like that or the
> solecism on page 693 that I took the liberty of mentioning? I figured he
> was more sanguine and self confident than that, more of a John Nguyen than
> a Gately or heaven forfend a Hal Incandenza...actually thought of him more
> as that locker room guru floating above the towels...which come to think of
> it was a pretty fun moment in the novel, though that diminishes my thesis
> (& not a moment too soon, I was about to complain about the p-goat
> concept)) the guy was a great writer, I don't mind saying. Had a narrative
> flow quite admirable! So, w/r/t television...
>
>
> http://www.thefreelibrary.com/E+unibus+pluram:+television+and+U.S.+fiction.-a013952319
>
>
> Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Televisual mediated reality has won; yet,says BE, that IS (almost)
>> nothing but entertainment as you say compared to the virtual dissolution of
>> self. Made real in BE.
>>
>> Perhaps a kind of transubstantiation unto death.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Jun 24, 2014, at 6:05 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > So, Mark, is BE another "jeremiad against TV's corrosively negative
>> > influence on American public life" (McHale, Zapping on Vineland, in
>> > Constructing Postmodernism p.123)?
>> >
>> > I don't think it is.
>> >
>> > The irony is the thing. And the ontological plumbing, the
>> > pluralization of mediated family life. This critique is not focused on
>> > the corrupting power of the Tube, though we all seem in need of
>> > Tubal-detox, now mobile devices etc. Feed, but on the community and
>> > family, the core or heart of resistance, and how it fails against such
>> > overwhelming odds and how it might, perhaps, not succeed, but have
>> > moments of Grace.
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 9:20 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> I see Ernie as correct in his Internet history and early
>> Pynchon-paranoid in
>> >> his prognosis. That prognosis may be right on--as he might have
>> said--as
>> >> well. Within it, I see P's lifelong vision that the more complex, the
>> more
>> >> abstract, the more virtual I.e. not viscerally 'real'
>> >> we are, the closer/sooner is the Step-function that is the apocalypse
>> of
>> >> History.
>> >>
>> >> Yet, in P's incredible balance beam of ambiguity, Ernie may be--in some
>> >> contextual way IS--
>> >> An irrelevant old Lefty, even if right---his analogue may be Webb
>> Traverse
>> >> in some sense---and P's deepest vision of BE is embodied in Maxine ( of
>> >> course) and the kids.
>> >>
>> >> Ernie is prosaic, literal TRP ( and friends like K. Sale?) out of their
>> >> depths given death & the DEEP WEB and the future where mediated reality
>> >> turns more and more into game-playing simulation that kills.
>> >>
>> >> Sent from my iPad
>> >>
>> >> On Jun 23, 2014, at 5:42 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
>> lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>> >> 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>
>> 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>
>> 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>
>> >> 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
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20140626/95aa5312/attachment.html>