Pynchon & Ellison: An Ambiguous Journey Into An American Dilemma

Mark Kohut mark.kohut at gmail.com
Tue May 26 06:18:45 CDT 2015


what a 'review'. ! Thnx.

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 6:37 AM, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The revisions of V., specifically those that pertain to Sphere are
> fascinating to Pynchon readers in may respects, but what strikes this reader
> most is not  that young Pynchon was so interested in, so fascinated with
> (see his adoring description in Intro to BDSL of the Cuban/Irish Farina
> circa the Spring Equinox) the Other in America. He wasn't alone, of course.
> That after failing with Sphere Pynchon would give it a go again in his short
> story, "The Secret Integration", then write Watts, and eventually get to
> Tyrone Slothrop, a protagonist that he modeled, in part, after Ellison's
> Invisible Man, tells us something about Pynchon's Journey into the ambiguous
> American Dilemma, and, it also tells us quite a bit about the author's
> ethics, morals, politics...
>
>  GUNNAR MYRDAL’S An American Dilemma is not an easy book for an American
> Negro to review. Not because he might be overawed by its broad
> comprehensiveness; nor because of the sense of alienation and embarrassment
> that the book might arouse by reminding him that it is necessary in our
> democracy for a European scientist to affirm the American Negro’s humanity;
> not even because it is an implied criticism of his own Negro social
> scientists’ failure to define the problem as clearly. Instead, it is
> difficult because the book, as a study of a social ambiguity, is itself so
> nearly ambiguous that in order to appreciate it fully and yet protect his
> own humanity, the Negro must, while joining in the chorus of “Yeas” which
> the book has so deservedly evoked, utter a lusty and simultaneous “Nay.”
>
> http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/an-american-dilemma-a-review/
>
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l



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