Tangentially Pynchon. see today's Google Doodle

Thu May 5 09:49:21 CDT 2016

David,

On this thread and on the Holocaust thread you have failed to
understand the use of terms. On the Holocaust, the post from Rich was
very good. I suggest you re-read it and reconsider how the words, like
"depict",  "holocaust" , "genocide" are being used by your
interlocutors. Rich demonstrates, with a gentle didactic post, a
strategy you seem to prefer but hypocritically rarely employ,  much
knowledge of the camps and what happened at each and how one could
certainly, as Doug has, for example, conclude that the holocaust is
present in GR. On Anarchy, Mark intimated that the word has several
meanings and that he was not using the term to mean no planning or the
lack of any plan. Again, if you reconsider your rigid readings of
terms, you, an obvious authority, may still, learn something new.

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 9:37 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> I also apologize for taking my objection to the label too far.  The fact
> that others have slapped the anarchy label on her isn't much of an argument
> about the content of her theories.  My post about her championing the "urban
> villiage" against Pruitt-Igoe is the most direct description of her work.  I
> would call that "organic."
>
> I agree it is semantic, but "anarchy" has connotations of "no-planning" that
> don't fit her at all. The fact that the Austrian Economics Cult embraced
> (hijacked) her as "Anti-Planner" shows how labels can be misleading and
> counter-productive.  Their "connection" with her is parasitic.
>
> David Morris
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 7:12 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> OK...I apologize for going on after my simple post yesterday....I did not
>> think it was so contestable.
>> as this wiki entry sez, as is true of most major words describing ideas,
>> 'There are many meanings to
>> anarchism and not all of them are mutually exclusive"
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
>>
>> In yesterday's Google Doodle article and in many summary presentations of
>> Ms Jacobs' notions,
>> the phrase 'street ballet" from her (or about her vision, don't know) is
>> used as the positive vision she
>> argued for deeply re the ineradicable human quality she believed necessary
>> for right city life.
>>
>> Knowing her work far less than Morris, that phrase and concept came to
>> remind me later of, among other things,
>> the anarchist's dance scene in Lot 49, under the bridge, everyone not
>> bumping, a self-organizing dance/ballet
>> that is part of TRP's vision, his hopeful vision. Then there is the
>> anarchy theme in Against the Day.
>>
>> When I would walk NY streets, including the Village or visit Washington
>> Square or Union Square parks and see
>> 1) chess hustlers playing 2) skateboarders 3) walkers 4) runners 5) simple
>> stretchers and exercisers 6) sunbathers
>> sunning 6) couples holding hands 7) couples canoodling 8) little picnics
>> 9) readers sitting 10) kids playing marbles
>> and more ....I would lightly marvel at how it all happened on its own,
>> self-organized, little or no bumping, so to say,  later coming to see
>> it under the label of a kind of social anarchy good.
>>
>> My attempt yesterday to link Jacobs 'street ballet' to a Pynchon's notion
>> of anarchy was just a speculative attempt
>> to point out that he lived in the Village when Jane was an activist with
>> her 'radical' notions; he was around when her
>> first book was published......I have asked myself and haven't found it in
>> the scholars of TRP I've read where TRP's notions
>> re anarchism might have come from....theorists like Kropotkin and
>> Herzen---we know he went to see Stoppard's play
>> on all these Russians decades later so there is them as a possible
>> influence but I have also wondered about
>> such as New Yorkers Goodman and Jacobs....
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 7:48 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Oh! I finally got the joke!
>>> Wherein the P-list debates the definition of anarchy.
>>> I'm with Joseph.
>>> But what we really need is a someone who can authorise which
>>> definition is correct.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 9:02 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>> > To my thinking this is semantic. If by anarchic we mean mean an
>>> > organizational tendency from less to no central authority or command, then
>>> > Mark and other writers are using the term reasonably. If one means a
>>> > political ideology with no executive decision makers and a committment to
>>> > removing those in authority, then you win...
>>> >> On May 4, 2016, at 5:13 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> To champion grass-roots  social-based urbanism (championing "urban
>>> >> villages," essentially) as opposed to the modernist urban renewal ideals of
>>> >> her time, doesn't make her in any way anarchistic.  She was opposed to
>>> >> Modernism's ideals for urbanism.  It has now long been recognized that her
>>> >> concepts of an organic people-oriented urbanism is much more livable than
>>> >> what she opposed.  Essentially she was pointing out that the ghettos that
>>> >> were being torn down were much more livable that the Pruitt-Igoe style
>>> >> urbanism that was being proposed to replace it.  She was right.  Labeling
>>> >> that stance as "anarchism" is silly and misses the main ideas she promoted.
>>> >>
>>> >> This (Pruitt-Igoe) is what she opposed:
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/22/pruitt-igoe-high-rise-urban-america-history-cities
>>> >>
>>> >> And the earlier city which surrounds the project (which was not the
>>> >> product of anarchy in any meaningful sense - except as opposed to
>>> >> Pruitt-Igoe)  in the photo is what she championed.
>>> >>
>>> >> David Morris
>>> >>
>>> >> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 3:48 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >> David,
>>> >>
>>> >> There is a deep strain of human-sized, freedom-embracing,
>>> >> non-top-down, self-organizing activities which
>>> >> have been written about even here as 'anarchism'. See the anarchist
>>> >> dance in Lot 49.
>>> >>
>>> >> Jacob's vision of city life has been seen under these concepts by many
>>> >> for a long time: Here is the estimable
>>> >> Richard Sennet for one: As Jane Jacobs points out, high concentration
>>> >> of dwelling units per acre and high land coverage are essential to the ...
>>> >> 1969), and the appreciative review by Richard Sennett, “The Anarchism of
>>> >> Jane Jacobs,” New York Review of Books ...
>>> >>
>>> >> There are scores more which I am not hunting down. it is her vision of
>>> >> urban living, and parts of mumford's which might relate
>>> >> them to Pynchon and are what I was referring to.
>>> >>
>>> >> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 4:12 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >> Jane Jacobs was in no way connected to anarchism, but, like Mumford,
>>> >> she was a proponent of urban living, as are most architects just about
>>> >> anywhere...
>>> >>
>>> >> David Morris
>>> >>
>>> >> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 2:32 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >> about urban theorist Jane Jacobs. Read up and see that
>>> >> she shared many notions with Lewis Mumford, discussed a lot
>>> >> here on the List. Her ideas of a vibrant diverse 'anarchic' street
>>> >> and storefront life might dovetail with many of P's meanings of
>>> >> anarchic goodness.
>>> >>
>>> >> Remember that she lived in Greenwich Village, near Barthelme
>>> >> (therefore
>>> >> Pynchon) I believe and Grace Paley and her husband
>>> >> most of the time TRP was supposed to have
>>> >> lived there. I think.
>>> >>
>>> >> Everything connects.
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> > -
>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l