BE -- "death wish for the planet" why the internet?

[ish mailian]

One of the most extensive studies of Pynchon's use of TV is Brian
McHale's "Zapping." The essay, on Vineland, is included in McHale's
excellent study _Constructing Postmodernism_. The essay is great. The
conclusion is a bit weak though. McHale packs the conclusion with a
lot of perhaps and maybe clauses that fade into speculations. Still,
it is one of the best essay on VL and on Pynchon's comedy after VL,
IV, BE. McHale also contributed to the Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide to
AGTD. In that volume his essay, "Genre as History: Pynchon's Genre
Poaching" continues and extends the analysis of Pynchon's use of
parody. Good stuff.

More good stuff here:
http://cst.sagepub.com/content/9/2/117.full.pdf+html


On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 5:17 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't remember it, but I wouldn't mind taking a look at it if you
> can post the page. Thanks.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 7:26 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Remember the density of the opera pun in M&D where the fictional Don
>> Aldo has a love named Marguerite...
>>
>> Marguerite being a kind of daisy. I've just read that it's often
>> confused with the Shasta daisy. Opening a rabbit hole I really don't
>> have time to go down.
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 10:05 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Well, he is **transfigured** in the ancient **Trinitron** glow while
>>> watching that obscure Marx Brothers opera. (top 418)  The Sony Tube, a
>>> technological wonder, now junk, stacked curbside, shipped off to
>>> China, where the salvaging of heavy metals is exchanged for the Rare
>>> Earths Horst is speculating on. Remind anyone of Oedipa and TV & God.
>>> Nothing but light comic commentary. Right? But Oedipa will get
>>> entangled in a Revenge Tragedy. Murder. Not so funny.
>>>
>>> So Thomas says we need an opera expert to get at P's use of Mozart and
>>> the Marx's here.
>>>
>>> Mark, you recently did an extensive study of Shakespeare, so I hope
>>> you can help us till the expert shows up. The scene with the
>>> transfiguration is important because it includes Pynchon's playful
>>> commentary on the 11 of September and the use of
>>> comedy/tragedy/conspiracy in artistic responses to it.
>>>
>>> To get at it we can use Wiki on the Opera and how Mozart characterized
>>> it, made us of comic and tragic modes.
>>>
>>> But before we do that, we should turn back to the first piece of music
>>> that sets the scene and gets the action going and it is, not Mozart
>>> but Rota,  from The Godfather. The composer used this piece for a
>>> comedy called Fortunella (1958). Nina Rota was fond of, well, some
>>> say, palimpsests, others say, theft (an interesting topic as P notes
>>> in SL), even of his own material and so he could not get the AW from
>>> the Hollywood idiots because technically the score was not original
>>> but stolen from a comedy and thrust into a tragedy. That's putting it
>>> simply. Italian Wedding Fake Books aside, the horn blaring the theme
>>> down Broadway wakes our protagonist from uneasy and fitful slumber and
>>> she wanders through the home of her father till she finds him in front
>>> of the Trinitron watching the Opera.
>>>
>>> Gotta go
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 5:13 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I remember thinking: P keeps it so...open-ended. " Geezer nostalgia" might also mean some old glow for when conspiracy theories were conspiracy theories.
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>
>>>>> On Mar 7, 2016, at 12:18 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Ernie actually makes the connection between the JFK assassination and 9/11:
>>>>>
>>>>> "'Same thing happened when JFK' was shot,' Ernie belatedly trying to defuse things with geezer nostalgia. "Nobody wanted to believe that official story either. So suddenly there were all these strange coincidences.'" (BE, 325)
>>>>>
>>>>> Love the "geezer nostalgia" -- remembering the good old times when the President's brains were blown out.
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l