Pynchon & Ellison: An Ambiguous Journey Into An American Dilemma

[Jerome Park]

Forget to include the soundtrack. Here it is:

https://vimeo.com/24575104

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 7:18 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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