LISS/STEPVR 11th daily collation (digest 27/25)

Fri Apr 24 05:22:00 UTC 2020

From: ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
To: Pynchon-l <Pynchon-l at waste.org>

Thomas sez:

-Zoyd as Ned Bottom.
> He?s a hardworking guy. Working class hero
> ?we?ll meet at Ninny?s Tomb!?
Bottom and the other workers have vocations, trades, jobs they are
skilled at. They were once apprentices and are now masters of an art.
This skill is power for the workers.

They've no skill as Thespians. To keep their jobs they must hone their
skill, but  as actors (or writers or Playwrights or Bartlebys ... see
Pynchon's Sloth Essay), to keep  heads they depend on the fickle
generosity of magnanimous royals. Zoyd, not an actor but a musician,
has some related experience, but his once a year gig as an actor (not
bad work if you can get it), and his head (including his maidenhead)
can be kept only if he performs for his fickle and violent bosses.

While we readers of books admire the author, the playwright, the
actor, the musician, the poet, we know that even Shakespeare, the son
of a provincial glover and illegal wool trader, was an actor, a
popular entertainer, a job most people considered dishonorable.

Yeah, as the exchange with Hector you quote below suggests, Hector, of
Mexican ancestry (a Latino and usually a  target of the corrupt
police, not to mention the faux protestant work ethic of
pro-capitalism working class whites) is, ironically, spouting the work
hard and play by the rules success myth) , even as he, like Zoyd,
collects a government check. But yeah, Zoyd hustles. And Hector,
though he hectors the hippies, and has disgust for how they live,
because he half believes the false narratives about hippies and
communes, and because he is more like them than he cares to admit,
because he fears the false narratives about his people, respects Zoyd
for his industry and work ethic. The fake economy in America can not
allow the real economy, as the pandemic now has exposed it, to compete
as a narrative, people can not know that communal living, as any
economist knows, is inherently economical. The crazy commune
narratives, the murder, neglect ... narrative, the hysterical high
pitched narrative must silence the community. Americans are generally
afraid of anything cooperative. Americans consider cooperative and
communal living subversive.

>
> For one thing it?s still morning, early riser in my book. Those doves in
> the dream could be the souls of the 290 people aboard Iran Air 655,
> Thanatoids in the making.

They are carrier pigeons and I place emphasis on the word **carrier**
because, though I am not an expert, carrier pigeons don't carry
messages; though they are related to the carriers of messages, they
are not honing pigeons, but show pigeons, bred for perfect beauty.
Not a mistake Pynchon would make. If it is one. And I don't think it
is. The word carrier here seems to allude to an aircraft carrier. The
squadron of jays, to a squadron of US jests. The light under the wings
of the pigeons, like the light under the jest wings. So the text, in
dream and in history seems to be about the US war on Iraq. Yes, I
agree, that the Iranians murdered by the US are referenced here.

-----------right, many kinds of pigeons. Even though a carrier pigeon didn't actually carry stuff,
there's precedent for that. Passenger pigeons didn't ride.
Homing pigeons is a different thing.

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Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2020 10:03:50 -0400
From: ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>

correction:  the US war on IRAN.

------skirmish. And may it never go beyond that, but recede. This is a nifty country, Iran - 
would be a great friend to have going forward.

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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2020 13:48:36 -0400
From: ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>

Never watched Moone Boy. I will look into it.

I don't read Zoyd's dream as troubled. Perhaps my comparison with
Poe's narrator (The Raven) suggests troubled dreams, but Zoyd is no
Gregor Samsa. I brought Poe's poem in to provide an easy example of
the confluence, the mixing of dream and non-dream, with history,
including the author's and the reader's, even of events that transpire
after 1984, the attack on Iran.  Pynchon is known for his use of
anachronisms. These come in many forms, and this is one such. So Nixon
shows up in GR. He mixes media into dream, into history, into readers.
So, you, dear reader, like  watching an opera, with Maxine Tarnow
watching it with her old man, and maybe it's apocryphal and
anachronistic.
 So Mr. Thoth:

 "That cruel old man," said Mr Thoth, "was an Indian killer. God, the
saliva would come out in a string from his lip whenever he told about
killing the Indians. He must have loved that part of it."
"What were you dreaming about him?" "Oh, that," perhaps embarrassed.
"It was all mixed in with a Porky Pig cartoon." He waved at the tube.
"It comes into your dreams, you know. Filthy machine. Did you ever see
the one about Porky Pig and the anarchist?"

Not troubled but nudged.  It's a nudge not a knife.

Know much about Nudge Theory?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory

>From the past ---------
From: David Morris 
To: "'pynchon-l@[omitted]'" 
Subject: VLVL, where are you? (1998)

Class? Any comments?

----------nice research! The more things change... Wouldn't have it any other way, I guess.

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Message: 15
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 07:47:45 +0000
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>

(vehicle census)

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Message: 16
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 08:30:40 GMT
From: "peterthooper at juno.com" <peterthooper at juno.com>

Rather be nudged than knifed, that?s for sure; rather nudge than knife.