On the phrase, "the revolution will not be televised" in Pynchon's 'Journey Into the Mind of Watts.'

Tue Jun 2 11:03:59 UTC 2020

Deeper diving into Jochen's observations on the phrase "the revolution will
not be televised" reveals
something interesting and confirming. Using Google Books we can learn that
that exact phrase first appears (among all the Google-scanned
and indexed books) in Dick Gregory's 1968 book,* Write Me In*. (Which means
it was surely in his manuscript in 1967. Because he knew it already.)

This use in Pynchon's piece, published in 1966 as Cometman sez, reminds me
of Pynchon's use, the first in a book, of the word "shrink'
in its still-current meaning In *The Crying of Lot 49, *with all linguists
telling us that new words, new phrases ALMOST ALWAYS
are in the speech of a group and in other kinds of writing before someone
gets them into a published book.

[one recent exception to this may be Norman Mailer's coinage of the word
'factoid' in his book on Marilyn Monroe called *Marilyn.*Dunno*] *

I never focused on that phrase in JMW and its timing before. Thanks,
Cometman. It surely shows, although only circumstantially that Thomas was
getting information from
'the street', from visiting places and talking to people, I would argue.

On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 5:24 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

>  - use of “busted” repeated later, w/r/t to broken (busted) tv art
> piece, rich with connotations “the revolution will not be televised” not
> released till 1971 but sometimes great minds think alike
>
> Before Scott-Heron used it as a title of his song it was already a Black
> Power slogan around the time and in the mind of Watts.
>
> Am Di., 2. Juni 2020 um 10:47 Uhr schrieb Cometman via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org>:
>
> > So, even a cursory reading is closer than the readings I have done in the
> > past of “Journey into the Mind of Watts” - unless the egotism of age
> > misremembers the depth of previous reading. But I think I really do get a
> > lot more out of it now.
> >
> > First, this came out in 1966, the year after the riots. It starts with an
> > account of a police shooting, so I’ve always lumped it in with the
> original
> > riot, even though the article repeatedly describes efforts put into place
> > in response to it, which should’ve made it obvious.
> >
> >
> > Building on that perception, I think there are two pairs of contrasting
> > attitudes that shimmer throughout the article: police/poverty warriors,
> and
> > black/white cultural attitudes.
> >
> > Lacking the equivalent of an electron microscope in terms of
> > reading/analyzing skills, I’m limited by the wavelength of the light I
> can
> > shine through the article, but one critiques using the skills one has,
> not
> > the skills one wishes one had. There may be one-word descriptors for some
> > effects I describe at greater length, eg.
> >
> > Anyhoo...CL49 had just come out, and in the middle of that event - which
> > would be pretty time-consuming - he apparently found time to do some
> > primary research in Watts, unless he made all that up. One thing I want
> to
> > trace briefly is evidence of primary research.
> >
> > EPR
> >
> > 1) preachers in the community are urging calm
> >
> > - you could get that from the papers, like the Deadwyler details. Not
> that
> > there’s anything wrong with that. A-and newspapers are “sort of” primary
> > sources, for my purposes.
> >
> > Interesting lead-off, to go right to the religious leaders with
> respectful
> > quoting, and their advice is the best of the lot imho. Is my take.
> >
> > 2) A Negro Teen Post--part of the L.A. poverty war's
> keep-them-out-of-the-
> > streets effort--has had all its windows busted, the young lady in charge
> > expressing the wish next morning that she could talk with the
> malefactors,
> > involve them, see if they couldn't work out the problem together.
> > - those were more innocent times - Negro Teen Post indeed!
> >
> > - use of “busted” repeated later, w/r/t to broken (busted) tv art
> > piece, rich with connotations “the revolution will not be televised” not
> > released till 1971 but sometimes great minds think alike
> >
> > - could’ve been in the papers, somebody talked to her next morning,
> either
> > young Mr Pynchon had his (what kind of footwear would a prize-winning
> > novelist wear to Watts? Not black shiny FBI shoes, nor likely designer
> > kicks, too early for Nikes...) figurative boots on the ground, or read
> > attentively the account of someone who did (now I’m trying to remember
> > somebody’s quote about how it took them hours to read the paper every
> day,
> > because they had to empathize with everyone in allthe stories)
> >
> > - use of the word “malefactors” subtly, and dare I say, skilfully
> suggests
> > an underlying aversion to property damage. This will be important
> > throughout, as a position established early on against which to measure
> > several rationales for violence that crop up.
> >
> > 3) “...the panoramic sense of black impoverishment is hard to miss from
> > atop the Harbor Freeway, which so many whites must drive at least twice
> > every working day. Somehow it occurs to very few of them to leave at the
> > Imperial Highway exit for a change, go east instead of west only a few
> > blocks, and take a look at Watts. A quick look. The simplest kind of
> > beginning. But Watts is country which lies, psychologically, uncounted
> > miles further than most whites seem at present willing to travel.”
> >
> > - this polling of attitudes would be easy research. The passage also
> > strongly suggests that the author did indeed “take a look” but, perhaps
> in
> > order to avoid a self-congratulatory tone, leaves it mostly implicit.
> >
> > 4)” ...in the daytime's brilliance and heat, it is hard to believe there
> > is any mystery to Watts. Everything seems so out in the open, all of it
> > real, no plastic faces, no transistors, no hidden Muzak, or Disneyfied
> > landscaping or smiling little chicks to show you around. Not in
> > Raceriotland. Only a few historic landmarks, like the police substation,
> > one command post for the white forces last August, pigeons now thick and
> > cooing up on its red-tiled roof. Or, on down the street, vacant lots,
> still
> > looking charred around the edges, winking with emptied Tokay, port and
> > sherry pints, some of the bottles peeking out of paper bags, others
> busted.”
> >
> > - too long of a quote. Sorry, won’t happen again
> >
> > - again with the “busted”
> >
> > - could get this from photos but I’m starting to believe he set foot
> there
> >
> > 5) ...ground-breaking festivities, attended by a county supervisor,
> pretty
> > high-school girls decked in ribbons, a white store owner and his wife,
> who
> > in the true Watts spirit busted a bottle of champagne over a rock--all
> > because the man had decided to stay and rebuild his $200,000 market, the
> > first such major rebuilding since the riot.
> >
> > - coulda been in the paper. This reading I caught the allusion to the
> > other broken wine bottles.
> >
> > 6) buncha unsourced quotes; coulda been ethnographic or sourced from
> > interviews in the paper. Does it really matter? He’s a novelist, could be
> > either one. They could even be made up, come to think of it.
> >
> > 7) It really does seem like he went to the Markham Junior High art fair.
> > But again, he’s refined out of the text, paring his fingernails.
> >
> > —- so, even though it’s not that important a question, the growing
> > impression throughout the piece is that he spent some time there, with a
> > novelist’s gaze. But then again, a fiction writer makes up stuff. This is
> > like a background issue. It’s not an account of *his* journey into the
> mind
> > of Watts, but more like he’s offering the reader a journey into it.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>