Re: Pynchon's Presidents

--- jbor <[email protected]> wrote:
> Might prove to be an interesting exercise this one,
> I think.
> 
> Working backwards: The characterisation of George
> Washington in _M&D_ is
> quite complimentary, and there's nothing negative in
> the portrayal of Thomas
> Jefferson that I could see either. However, William
> Jefferson Clinton is
> lambasted quite scathingly in the very first
> chapter, of course.

Surely your  characterization is inaccurate here. 
Clinton is not lambasted quite scathingly in chapter
one of M&D or anywhere else in a Pynchon novel. 





> 
> I haven't been back to _Vineland_ in a while, but I
> wonder how the
> references to Reagan weigh up against those to LBJ
> and his escalation of the
> Vietnam War - if there are any, that is.

Not quite  sure what the question is here, but
obviously Reagan is lambasted quite scathingly in VL. 
In the essay on Sloth the Reagan/Bush team are again
lambasted quite scathingly. 




> 
> Dwight David Eisenhower doesn't come out of _GR_ too
> badly, although Byron
> the Bulb does seem to have had it in for Herbert
> Clark Hoover (649.12).
> Nixon as Richard M. Zhlubb is ridiculed, but it's
> almost a cartoon
> stereotype. He's more foolish than evil. Even less
> flattering are the
> depictions of JFK and FDR:
> 
> "Jack Kennedy, the ambassador's son" (GR 65.33)
> 
> It is nice to think that one Saturday night [...]
> Malcolm looked up from
> some Harvard kid's shoes and caught the eye of Jack
> Kennedy (the
> Ambassador's son), then a senior. Nice to think that
> young Jack may have had
> one of them Immortal Lightbulbs then go on
> overhead--did Red suspend his
> ragpopping just the shadow of a beat, just enough
> gap in the moiré there to
> let white Jack see through, not through to but
> through *through* the shine
> on his classmate Tyrone Slothrop's shoes?" (GR
> 688.19)


Not sure how you are reading this passage as a barb 
targeting JFK himself? 

> 
> "Roosevelt, a being They assembled, a being They
> would dismantle. . . . "
>                                                    
> (GR 374.25)

Certainly rediculous, this narrator is so paranoid he
thinks THEY control every blade of grass on the earth,
not to mention everything under and over it. 


> 
> And, of course:
> 
> "We must also never forget Missouri Mason Harry
> Truman: sitting by virtue of
> death in office, this very August 1945, with his
> control-finger poised right
> on Miss Enola Gay's atomic clit, making ready to
> tickle 100,000 little
> yellow folks into what will come down as a fine
> vapor-deposit of
> fat-cracklings wrinkled into the fused rubble of
> their city on the Inland
> Sea. . . . " (GR 588.7)

Again, I don't know how you can read this as a comment
on Truman and then compare it with Washington in M&D
or 
Richard the theater manager? 


> 
> It's the most heartfelt and contemptuous testimonial
> of them all, surely.

a testimonial? Gee wiz! 
And it may read heartfelt to you, but what heart is 
feeling this exactly? Again, I would never consider
these passages characterizations of presidents, much
less try to argue that they are indicative of the
author's politics or even how he viewed these men. 

Sorry, but you did such a fine job of identifying
exactly what happened here after 9-11, noting that it
was all down to the election and bitterness of a few
list members and their ugly  USA party politics, and
here you go handing out vote for the giant elephant
not in the room  buttons. 



> 
> Can't recall offhand if there are presidential
> apparitions in _Lot 49_, _V._
> or any of the early stories.
> 
> best
>  



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