CoL49 - 2nd section of chapter 5

Tue Jul 2 21:53:37 UTC 2024

All too much for me to 'swallow"....to me, much of this is like the "false
consciousness" that Marxism named....
but in reverse....
I see TRP simply accurately saying how many young men of the time, any
time, thought of their female get-it-on-with friends..
as "chicks"...the word is of the time.....read a history or memoir of the
time, see how most of the women were treated....read
memoirs even of Leftists ....women, esp and how they were seen and treated
by these men/boys for good societal change...
anti-capitalist, anti-war and, unfortunately---hardly aware enough of women
to be anti-women....Metzger's crude sex wants
are as bad as he musicians.....and with one leaving for Metzger TRP shows
the equivalence....TRP working this awareness into this novella which
attitude--a little of--he apologized for in Slow Learner, from his early
stories and V...

I see TRP taking this issue as seriously as all the others....He satirizes
and makes us laugh as seriously as he explores, plays with. inserts
the "numinous' into his fictions...

Arrabal (arable) doesn't work for me...Spanish/English non-association for
one reason.....but look up the meaning of Arrabal and
it means an area outside of a city, an area around a city......fits very
nicely into TRP's vision of anarchism I suggest......just the occasional
area in our world......

And then THIS association: ...coupled with JESUS, jesus!....a glimpse from
another world, right?

In 1962, Arrabal co-founded the Panic Movement
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_Movement> with Alejandro Jodorowsky
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Jodorowsky> and Roland Topor
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Topor>, inspired by the god Pan
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(mythology)>. He was elected
Transcendent Satrap of the Collège de Pataphysique
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Pataphysics#The_Coll%C3%A8ge_de_'Pataphysique>
 in 1990. Forty other Transcendent Satraps have been elected over the past
half-century, including Marcel Duchamp
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp>, Eugène Ionesco
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Ionesco>, Man Ray
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Ray>, Boris Vian
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Vian>, Dario Fo
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dario_Fo>, Umberto Eco
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco>, and Jean Baudrillard
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard>. Arrabal spent three years
as a member of André Breton
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Breton>'s surrealist group and
was a friend of Andy Warhol
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol> and Tristan
Tzara <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_Tzara>.

Writer and critic Javier Villan
<https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Vill%C3%A1n> wrote of Arrabal:

Arrabal's theatre is a wild, brutal, cacophonous, and joyously provocative
world. It is a dramatic carnival in which the carcass of our 'advanced'
civilizations is barbecued over the spits of a permanent revolution
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_revolution>. He is the artistic
heir of Kafka <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka>'s lucidity and
Jarry <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Jarry>'s humor; in his
violence, Arrabal is related to Sade
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade> and Artaud
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artaud>. Yet he is doubtless the only writer
to have pushed derision as far as he did. Deeply political and merrily
playful, both revolutionary and bohemian, his work is the syndrome of our
century of barbed wire and Gulags, a manner of finding a reprieve.[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Arrabal#cite_note-1>

On Tue, Jul 2, 2024 at 3:46 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> In a materialist, competitive society there is a fair amount of confusion
> between love and capital assets . Miles, Dean Leonard and Serge have names
> but their companions are “their chicks”. The confusion is a marketing
> bonanza for capitalism. .  But the net effect on marriage  is that a better
> position is offered and the acquired partnership fails while the abandoned
> partner may have seen love and meaning and a human sanctuary where there
> was really  only a contingency. This is echoed with the drummer when his
> girlfriend still called only "Serge’s chick" leaves him for Metzger. The
> reaction of the jilted  can be cynicism about love or a search for the real
> thing in self and relations. Of course there are many versions of what is
> real, and it is hard to see Pynchon taking this topic over seriously apart
> from OM’s intense pursuit of what is real in both love and capitalism, good
> faith and foul play, law and truth, the lives of the powerful and the
> powerless.
>
> What I mean is it is hard to take seriously the problems of either the
> paranoids shallow youth culture and art; or the problems of weapons and
> aerospace  executives, who don’t know what they are signing, getting
> replaced by a computer; or lawyer/actors  like Metzger  going for easier
> prey.  What I take more seriously  is the IA, the rejection of love  that
> grows out of  and is really essential to Yoyodyne policies and is a
> powerful force in the dark satiric vision of America Pynchon is
> elaborating. Money from violence or deception is real and highly desired,
> and human commitment and shared values are slogans for productivity and
> sales tools.  That this IA  organization is followed in O. M.’s next
> personal encounter by the CIA seems no accident to me. Claims of
> clandestine intelligence  instead of love, secret power vs local post
> colonial collective decision making, coercion versus anarchism,
> Angelo/Angleton versus Niccolo/Kennedy. Cities designed like printed
> circuits with fake lagoons vs (Arrabal arable) land from Mazatlan still
> connected to its own history, where the CIA is not shaped by fascists but
> anarchist collectives as they resist becoming another plaything of rich
> gringos..
>
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> > On Jul 2, 2024, at 6:37 AM, J K Van Nort via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> >
> > Questions:Why is it love and not capitalism that the founder of IA
> believes has ruined his life?
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>