Some of the alphabet: a) I think it was “low-waisted”

[Raphael Saltwood]

...rather than “long-waisted.” Not willing to revisit the source at this juncture. Can’t understand - or completely deny - the allure.


B) I liked SweetTarts, although Smarties are more manageable and contain less of the sour. You speak of sweets as a part of your past, and I, also, for 30 years or more, have lived mostly in denial of candy and donuts and cake, although there’s this Mexican cake that every couple of years...and a gluten free chocolate cake on certain birthdays...Not to mention the odd Reese’s cup, just to bring back this one particular year when...and frozen yogurt with a coating of coconut oil (it hardens up) - but better still is a peeled orange that sits for a while, so that the outside of it gets kind of crunchy but the inside is liquid and delicious

C) there is a strong temptation to post stuff that asks for devout attention without doing the editing to earn it. I struggle with this myself.

D) that Thomas Wolfe was something. Critical opinion of him has dropped, hasn’t it? But there’s a train ride, and an auto jaunt, and a meal somewhere in there (“green beans, for the healthy balance of the diet”)(forerunner of “mouth-tripping time” in GR) that were a lot of fun to read. So he’s got that going for him! That valiant and famous editor, Maxwell Perkins, saved a lot of trees, so *he*’s got that going for *him*.

E) so a danger of viral infections is for the immune system to overreact? But not the only danger: so tempting to theorize here but there’s probably a virus group where one could lurk? IJS.

F) I’ve affection for this group of links (This is a new one) http://orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=a5e00132373a7031000fd987a3c9f87b.150&s=e5de9ea075442c1c09baa93c89551c3b

because, well, Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer are such cool names, studying schizophrenia in Saskatchewan (talk about trippingly off the tongue), and that Linus Pauling was awesome, and a bunch of reasons. But I hope you are doing all the CDC precautions, and I myself am wary, and even chary, of pursuing this topic here, although the opposition one encounters to what seems to me like really good stuff tends to read the same way unfriendly Pynchon criticism does: they miss the point, they cherry-pick things to disagree with, sometimes it seems like they aren’t telling the whole truth, and the things they prefer - with which they often have an affiliation - aren’t  noticeably better.

But - Nobody’s perfect, Hooper. we’re all trying as hard as we can.

Even the President of the United States must sometimes have to...let’s not go there

But how do you think Mafia Winsome in V. provides a useful critique (or other kind of helpful thought-form) applicable to Ayn Rand? Do you actually have some notions about it?




____________________

visiting the oeuvre for ideas, there�s that giant adenoid in
GR. Not exactly the same as a virus, but similarly incomplete as a life form, it snuffles
its way around London. If you imagine  all the instantiations of the virus as a single
phenomenon, there are similarities: primarily imho casting the Adenoid as a predilection
for cocaine which was beginning to sweep through society around the time of GR�s
publication and in many circles earned the sobriquet of �epidemic.�

Metaphorically �going viral� has appeared often in popular parlance, around various other
phenomena, occupying kind of the same headspace as the �100th Monkey� ideation that was
popular enough in �New Age� circles to attract vigorous debunkers (and to intrigue those
who are willing to consider such statements within a framework of common sense, whether
to strip them down to their base pairs - to extend the metaphor - and use them for parts,
or to accommodate some of the sequences within the ribosomes, organelles, vacuoles, or
even the nucleus of one�s worldview.)

The �going viral� verbiage posits a physical means of communication, so it isn�t as
barn-door-like a target for materialists as 100th Monkey theory. It�s also very brief, so
the metaphor resembles its own tenor and has permeated our discourse widely but - to the
best of my knowledge - few if any writers have applied themselves to wailing on the
metaphor even to the limited extent here offered.

But, tying it back into the Adenoid metaphor, the actual, non-metaphorical virus in its
epizootic form (I just love the sound of �epizootic� heard inwardly in a WC Fields or
William Burroughs voice, and I know I�m pronouncing and using it wrong, but it flows so
trippingly) aggravates a propensity in the same way as the Adenoid: the immune response.
The pneumonia that�s sometimes occurred in Covid-19 hosts is the body overreacting, isn�t
it? An intelligent and measured immune response is what takes place in a large majority
of Covid hosts, ways and means of dealing with the unwanted guest, ancient somatic
traditions for reacting to this new variation on a familiar phenomenon come into play.

It is *so great* that, as a society, we�re acting on the idea that formerly inevitable
collateral damages on the road to herd immunity are unacceptable!

The thought form of the Adenoid lumbers and lurches through the streets like a plague;
the epizootic stumbles and shambles through our habits and parlance not so differently
from (or �differently to� if you�re British) Pynchon�s _Gravity�s Rainbow_�s Adenoid.

___
eBay has tp
Well, they seem to: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=toilet+paper&_trksid=p2380057.m40
84.l1311.R1.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xtoilet.TRS0&_sacat=0

____
Ayn Rand, Larry David and Mafia Winsome:
The take I think I�ve been cherishing on Ayn Rand is her followers would be the ones
hoarding and price-gouging sanitizer, but Larry David in that movie where he blows up a
stadium or something - the early scenes have him with really long hair, has that
character�s nemesis who is portrayed as actually a good guy, naming one of his sons after
Howard Roark or Ayn Rand herself.

Mafia Winsome might be a nuanced take on Ayn Rand or a melange of various characteristics
around her. Ann Tyler has said her idea of Heaven would be to live among the characters
in the books she�s written. While I�ve never read any similar statement about or by
Thomas Pynchon, I find myself liking, to some extent, most of the characters in his
books: poor old Dumpster Villard, or Lloyd Nipple, or Greta Erdman or Gory Gnahb.

Virally speaking, and to pur�e the metaphor, one�s cellular mechanics have come to
include epicycles to accommodate them beyond their utility in demonstrating certain
principles which one may or may not intuit that the author may or may not be trying to
illustrate.

For that matter, there are little nuggets of likeability in Rand characters such as Dagny
Taggart (vanishingly few in John Galt, however) and contrarianly in that Ellsworth Toohey
(in fact I think I liked him best of all.) Somewhere I picked up those books around age
15 (my mother gave me _For the New Intellectuals_ and _The Virtue of Sefishness_ for
Christmas that year, I think because she saw me reading the novels, and wanted me to dig
a little deeper) and they made clear that the quality-of-life checks uttered by
Objectivism all bounced - something I strongly suspected in the novels, but was willing
to read on about the long-waisted (what the heck does that really mean anyway?)(but 15 yo
me found it enticing) Dagny Taggart and the tragedy of typos in the New York Times, and
inedible soybeans replacing wheat (which, come on, is just as inedible before
processing), and farmers pulling their plows by hand after Ellsworth Toohey and the New
Dealers refused all glory to that Frisco guy and his ilk.

�Hello Frisco!� �Hello Slug!� Winced reading that, like fingernails on chalkboard or
eating one of those Sour Patch Kids - actually at the time there was something else
really sour, big or little things, �Bite �em for a burst of flavor!� - Ghod! SweetTarts!
(I was more of an Ice Cube (milk chocolate cubes) or Chunky (but the Ice Cubes were
better!) kind of kid.  Or Sen-Sen, Beechnut/Blackjack/Fan Tan Gum, little drops of
Binaca, and for a salty treat a dry boullion  cube or Onion Soup straight out of the
package. But not so much of a sour aficionado.)
Reading Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged at my grandma�s farm, with the tin roof on which
the rain could play polyrhythms; that winter it was _Look Homeward, Angel� and �You Can�t
Go Home Again,� at my other grandma�s Florida bungalow.
From Galt to Gant, surrounded by grandmotherly kindness. Much gratitude for many of these
memories!

But anyway, besides holding Objectivism up for well-deserved ridicule, there may be some
interesting considerations in the way Mafia Winsome is ensconced in _V._


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