LISS/STEPVR 3 conversations

[Raphael Saltwood]

Mark wrote:
Almost always too much to deal with at once so...we deal with nothing. Just sayin'


You called a read, I jumped right in ("the rain man gave me 2 cures and said, "jump right in"") and noting a paucity of willing hosters, proposed and tentatively
 won you over to a minimalist protocol. I'm sittin' here, I mean I'm sittin' here on the small topics bench & now you got the nerve to say I'm not minimalist enough to join the group read after the tiniest of exegeses and a single Adorno reference?

Let me explain -----
(From the wings: "take him in for regrooving!" - the squeaking of a winch is heard and Saltwood is retracted towards the hovering Huey)
As he rises we hear "but that's the beauty of the LISS/STEPVR - the topics are out there! Anyone can add one or grab one. Show us what a good small topic is! Show us how to elicit responses, please!  If you wanna end war and stuff, ya gotta sing loud!")



On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 4:35 AM Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com<mailto:PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>> wrote:
5) truly brief recap of 3 important conversations -
   a) Hector with Zoyd at bowling alley
    b) BV with Zoyd right before his “extrajudicial” gut punch
    c) Hector with Frenesi near the end

a) Hector with Zoyd at bowling alley: a warning, a berating, and lunch. The warning is a huge favor, the berating is standard-issue for them & quite poetic, and lunch the Health Food Enchilada Special for Z, & for Hector cream of zucchini soup and the vegetarian tostada.


b) BV, after for-real processing him into some kinda jail ("strip search, fingerprinting, picture taking, and form typing, the line for supper" (297)) tells Zoyd what's going to happen. There is no amiability but there is again a big favor: he can disappear with Prairie for awhile if he doesn't interfere with Frenesi. Instead of a berating, Z gets a beating. For dinner, "miscellaneous pork pieces, instant mashed potatoes, and red Jell-O" (297) and after a night in a cell, a "breakfast" (302) that isn't worth any detail at all, apparently.


c) Hector & Frenesi, offers her director's role in the big movie he imagines - and, one never knows, it could happen. "It was disheartening to see how much he depended on the Tubal fantasies about his profession, relentlessly pushing their propaganda message of cops-are-only-human-got-to-do-their-job,"

 would he be nicer or meaner without those fantasies? Probably be a lot more like Vond.

he even buys her the plane tickets to Vineland!

what's it all mean?

It's hard to hate Hector. Easy to hate BV.

Why? the softening influence of that exact Tubalmania springs to mind; Pynchon berates it like Hector berates Zoyd earlier, poetically, by rote, "the obligatory anti-TV screed," knowing his readers, in all likelihood, and he himself, no matter how deeply involved they get in _Vineland_, will return to their own TVs like Zoyd to his marijuana or, perhaps, even like Frenesi to BV.

But I never noticed before that he offers Frenesi the directorship of his movie "Drugs - Sacrament of the Sixties, Evil of the Eighties." She could have her own chair and megaphone. She could say, "Roll 'em," or, "Everybody take ten!"

She has a lot of willpower, to turn that down. A-and actually, her presence might have made the whole thing float, and given her the agency to, what's the phrase? she could ironically repossess it or something.

But I think she is stuck in Adorno's negative dialectic, to some extent.


--
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