Tangentially Pynchon. see today's Google Doodle

Thu May 5 09:57:14 CDT 2016

Ish,

You have failed (once again) to make me pay any attention to your posts.  I
inevitably delete them before completing the first sentence.

David Morris

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 9:49 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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/?listpynchon-l
>
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