The Beats Go On

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

LOT64 at aol.com (now there's a sig!) wrote:
" First, Pynchon's take on the Beats seems to be primarily satirical.  He
stands apart from them and observes them in a fondly critical way ("the Whole
Sick Crew" is not regarded in the same idealized light as Kerouac reveres
Cody et al)  The major difference between Pynchon and the Beats is Pynchon's
profound sense of history.  He is always looking at things in their
historical context.  He is always looking for connections between the past
and the present and seeing the continuities and absurd juxtapositions.  The
Beats lived in exaltation of the NOW.  Digging the moment was the most
important value- exemplified by improvisation in jazz, writing (Kerouac's
typing not writing, poetry reading etc.)  Pynchon is intimately involved in
history from Jacobean revenge tragedy, the Fashoda affair, Weimar intrigues
etc.  I dont see any stylistic connection between Burroughs and Pynchon
except for their corrosively funny senses of humor.  Pynchon I think has more
of a connection with Surrealism.  Of course I may be blowing my whole
arguement, since NAKED LUNCH is very much informed by the cut-up method.  I
never really understood NAKED LUNCH till I read JUNKY which is the basic text
that is cut up and added to to create NAKED LUNCH."

I'd largely agree, but with a few points of demural.  The Beats were interested
in the Now, but also in recovering a buried counter-cultural history that
extended back to American influences like the Wobblies and European literary
sources--see Ginsburg, esp., invoking Rimbaud and Blake.  Pynchon is, I agree,
not that much like Burroughs (who is? thank god) but he does at times evoke
a kind of Kerouacian nostalgia in his valorizing of the preterite.  The sailor
with DTs and the whole W.A.S.T.E. system in LOT49 is one example.

Actually, it occurs to me that VINELAND probably has more in common with the
Beat tradition than any of TRP's other works, perhaps because of its California
setting.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)