Fwd: STetc ch 38 indications

[Joseph Tracy]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Re: STetc ch 38 indications
Date: 	Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:33:06 -0400
From: 	Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com>
Organization: 	www.brooksideglassworks.com
To: 	Michael Bailey <mi256118 at ucf.edu>



I'm not at all sure there is an April as a knowable individual.  Is 
there a real Melania( certainly you or I or the most ardent follower of 
Melania stories will almost surely never know anything but fiction, 
image)?  There is a point where you are defined by the image and social 
role you have accepted,  and essentially by who has a controlling 
interest.  It seems that Hicks comes closer to knowing April in a 
personal way than anyone in the novel. What he finds is a fragile desire 
for someone who loves her as her tender self enough to make a bonding 
relationship, but which desire is completely stymied by her terror of 
anything like marriage, commitment, vulnerability. He is also bound in 
the same dilemma and it's a pretty universal issue.

One of the human questions the novel seems to deal with is how, for 
many, that personal and social  struggle breaks down into negotiating 
for power advantage, thus losing any or most human needs for 
unconditional love or for universal values. It seems to me that it is in 
this process that empathy breaks down both for an individual and for a 
society.   The angry affinity gangs and the Big Cheeses take over who, 
almost always through ruthlessness, can afford power and paid loyalty, 
and there is less and less room for shared values and conscience. Love 
becomes a hollywood image and loses its down to earth grounding in 
friendship, care for children and the vulnerable, entended families, 
local communities with their day to day economies, shared lives, shared 
stories, shared histories.


    Is there a real Melania, a real Marylin Monroe? Is there a real 
America buried in the competing and coordinating  crime families and 
power struggles the multitude of talk show versions of America circling 
like fascist motorcylsists looking for sacrificial victims, or; have too 
many  gone too  far in the pursuit of personal comfort and security,  
purchased at the cost of turning our backs on the endless victims, that 
we have lost the revolutionary energy and vision to stop the Orwellian 
wars, break from the endless distractions and renegotiate the meaning of 
our lives, or whatever might be left of a commitment to the common good?

On 4/20/26 12:28 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:
> -- Dippy's international intrigue gig, putting together ahead of time 
> a resistance in Sicily, would've been funded by foreign policy elements -
>
> Adding State Dept to the Mob/FBI mix -
> It seems like, for Them, as well as for Säure Bummer, "when you're 
> this high and you need somebody to show up, they show up" (or words to 
> that effect.
>
> But (and I know you're not so much) I'm more interested in April qua 
> April and as romantic interest for Hicks.
>
>
> The mob played a key role in watching the ports and seacoast activity
> for the FBI  during WW2. This increased Mob power at docking areas which
> later was used to move highly enriched uranium to Israel for nuclear
> weapons. Lansky and other mobsters were also key profiteers in Cuba,
> whose many connections to the JFK murder have been noted by
> investigators, starting with Dorothy Kilgallen who died under very
> dubious circumstances, the 1st of many.  If the weirdly innocent April
> represents a certain possibility for America, as suggested by this
> repeated pattern in P satire, her 'protection/ownership claims' by this
> particular conformation of shared interests reinforces that pattern.
>
> On 4/19/26 3:02 AM, Michael Bailey via Pynchon-l wrote:
> > Thus underscoring connections betwixt the Chicago/Milwaukee mob and 
> the government agency presumably employing "the Dipster"