LISS/STEPVR 3 conversations

[Mark Kohut]

Yeah, you're right....a confession of my failure which I was wondering
whether applied to many.

I'll jump in and get a foothold again.

Thanks.

On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 9:46 PM Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>
wrote:

> 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> 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.
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>