"The rent's too high"

Sat Jan 7 19:43:25 CST 2017

He values the strain of non-violent anarchy everywhere we can find it. I never speak of any Ideal Anarchy in ATD, if that is implied, and we've been thru this wrong turn before. The " ideal anarchy" in ATD is the scene where one is told to pick a T-shirt from a pile of everyone's.

I wrote TRP never tries to build a civilization with his visions of anarchy but I do think he offers
Some subculture of a very tender anarchic community in the dancing scene in LOT 49. 
And, of course, he implied meanings to dance that McNeil's historic generalization does not refute. 

I 

Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 7, 2017, at 7:54 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Pynchon could lambast everything, but then he would value nothing.
> 
> His portrayal of an ideal Anarchy in ATD is absurd, surely not meant as a model for society.  I think he knows Anarchy is a Quiote's quest, but laments that reality.
> 
> David Morris
> 
>> On Saturday, January 7, 2017, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Pynchon's 'Anarchy' is not farcical, except when he makes almost anything farcical, it is a serious vision---but not
>> of how to build a civilization, since he is NOT doing that in his works. 
>> 
>> The dancing anarchist 'community' under the
>> bridge in Lot 49 is ..a vision of how a community can be anarchist. 
>> 
>> Dance is necessary but not sufficient for civilization sez McNeill. 
>> 
>> Birth is necessary for life at all, of course, and happens in uncivilized groups too. So is not 
>> basic to civilization except in the sense life is. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 4:09 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> OK, I buy that in theory, but in this real world how could WE ever "return" or invent a civilization without an "Authority" that regulates social interaction, and by "social" I mean global.
>>> 
>>> Pynchon has always toyed with Anarchy, but he knows better. It is just a polemic tool that is farcical at best.
>>> 
>>> David
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Saturday, January 7, 2017, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Logically, it is finding one or more not built on cruelty proving he overgeneralized mostly by
>>>> writing about the Western world he knew so deeply.
>>>> 
>>>> Not too much awareness of other civilizations which anthropologists
>>>> and others were finding. 
>>>> 
>>>> Or by redefining most of the shallow definitions of cruelty, which he sorta did. 
>>>> See self-overcoming or that "Overman" concept. 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 2:38 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Didn't Nietzsche say something like all civilization is built on cruelty?  But what's the alternative?
>>>>> 
>>>>> David Morris
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Saturday, January 7, 2017, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> I didn't see this mentioned here so I'll insert it.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Property taxes are another form of rent. Even when the property is owned 'free and clear' and the landlord or banker is vanquished, property taxes come due regularly with an unsentimental threat to pay or face confiscation.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I digress...
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I used to spend a lot of time  checking out "homesteader" holdings when I was younger. I was always impressed by how thoroughly they were reducing the actual cash needed for survival. Most back-to-the-landers (better description) were well aware that they had to pull together enough cash each year to pay their taxes or they'd lose their holdings. Usually this meant some sort of  off-the-land seasonal employment (fruit picking or Christmas retail) but often it meant planting fine lumber trees which would  be sold off to lumber companies a tree at a time to make ends meet when the land holder got too old or too crotchety to bring in the cash. The new plagues of boring beetles in the US must be upsetting a lot of best-laid-plans coast-to-coast nowadays.(Didja know that when I started non-toxic farming 30 years ago that there were locust fence posts in some fence lines that had been standing for nearly a hundred years?Traditionally, locust was so innately rot-proof that it outlasted other hardwood fence posts at a ratio of about 4 to 1 (If your posts were oak you'd replace them 4 times before you would have had to replace a locust post.) Now, thanks to chaos in the natural order (here in WV most likely caused by precipitation of toxic discharges of smoke stacks somewhere in the mid-West acidifying the soils enough to disrupt the primordial soil foodweb even on 'virgin soils' enough that entropy of a system that had maintained itself through millennia ensued) In the past dozen years more and more locusts are infected with a 'heartwood fungus' that causes the locust to produce a wood that is essentially not rot resistant at all and certainly doesn't hold in the soil any longer than a good oak post. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -Allan in WV
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 8:18 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> :-)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> > Except for yours which is being raised.
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:33 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
>>>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170107/10858da1/attachment.html>