Rent

[Jochen Stremmel]

Nick couldn't imagine Man rising higher than the moon ...

2017-01-07 16:30 GMT+01:00 ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>:

> This idea of colonizing through eviction and building is a standard in
> the American novel, but so is, and this is more important and true of
> Pynchon's characters, the characters who  don't want to stay put
> anyway. There is America a push and a pull. Its people were pushed and
> pulled to its shores and pushed and pulled on others, both those here
> before them and those on the way in. But for Pynchon, a typical
> American Novelist in this respect at least, it is the immature
> American male who won't grow up and settle down, is restless to be on
> the road, so having your house of the seven gables appropriated after
> you are accused of (witchcraft, communism, anarchism, socialism,
> spying for the enemy....etc.) is not at the center of the works. Sure
> Dixon and Mason can see what is happening as the line is extended West
> as the Natives are pushed, but the focus is clearly on these men who
> wander and wonder. Now they may consider, as Scott Fitzgerald does,
> how once the country looked to Dutch sailor's eyes, but that
> consideration or reflection is commensurate  with their sense of
> wonder and that, that is the real work of the novels. The
> subjunctives, not the real houses that were razed to erect parking
> lots, but he paradise lost that we no longer dream of.
>
> Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any
> lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the
> Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to
> melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that
> flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the
> new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for
> Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest
> of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have
> held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an
> aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to
> face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his
> capacity for wonder.
>
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 9:58 AM, Chase Carnot <chase.carnot at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Some of us like it :-P
> >
> > And you can't talk about rent without talking about eviction...
> >
> > Tariq Khalil's old turf on Artesia Boulevard being bulldozed for
> Wolfmann's
> > new Channel View Estates.
> >
> > A paranoid U.S. Government evicted the Japanese from the same area during
> > World War II. They were 'relocated' of course.
> >
> > "The long, sad history of Los Angeles land use: Mexican families bounced
> out
> > of Chavez Ravine to build Dodger Stadium, American Indians swept out of
> > Bunker Hill for the Music Center ... and now Tariq's neighborhood,
> bulldozed
> > aside for 'Channel View Estates.'" (p. 17)
> >
> > A tectonic shift evicts Lemurians too, sinking their homeland to the
> bottom
> > of the ocean. Some escape to California and make a home with all the
> other
> > exiles.
> >
> > More broadly, Americans moving westward (some evicted from the east,
> nearly
> > all evicted from the Old World prior to that) to fulfill their Manifest
> > Destiny, a grandiose euphemism for the eviction of Native Americans.
> >
> > On Jan 7, 2017 7:34 AM, "Mark Thibodeau" <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Every time I see this goddamn discussion thread re-appear in my inbox,
> >> I get nervous all over again.
> >>
> >> Jeez with the RENT crap already!
> >>
> >> ;-)
> >>
> >> YOPJ
> >>
> >> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 6:35 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> > Or even, thinking of the lifelong power/ domination theme, all about "
> >> > structured subjugation", a phrase I like learned in an essay on
> >> > globalization, which is not, or not just, " everything solid melting
> into
> >> > air" these days, something Pynchon also knew in his (only)
> pre-modernity
> >> > novel, Mason& Dixon.
> >> >
> >> > Sent from my iPad
> >> >
> >> >> On Jan 7, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Isn’t the relationship of landlord to renter a rather obvious mirror
> of
> >> >> the more universal Pyncon theme of colonizer and colonized?
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Can the relationship between renters and landlords be extrapolated
> >> >>> into a broader existential dynamic? It's worth a thought.
> >> >>>
> >> >>>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Chase Carnot <
> chase.carnot at gmail.com>
> >> >>>> wrote:
> >> >>>> "[...] Crocker Fenway chuckled without mirth. ‘A bit late for that,
> >> >>>> Mr.
> >> >>>> Sportello. People like you lose all claim to respect the first time
> >> >>>> they pay
> >> >>>> anybody rent.’"
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> When I saw PT Anderson's IV, this line jumped at me for the first
> >> >>>> time. In
> >> >>>> the novel, it must have just washed over me. Anyway, I've been
> >> >>>> thinking
> >> >>>> about diving back into the novel sometime soon with an eye toward
> >> >>>> rent as a
> >> >>>> central theme. I felt vindicated when a reading app I use cropped
> the
> >> >>>> IV
> >> >>>> 'Last Supper' poster... it left the center...
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> https://goo.gl/photos/zaJops8hNHUrju2u6
> >> >>> -
> >> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
> >> >>
> >> >> -
> >> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >> > -
> >> > 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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