Pynchon - a product of his times redux

[David Casseres]

I wrote

>> Pynchon uses the bigotry, casual or intense, of his characters as one
>> part of the general machinery of his novels.  Does he denounce bigotry?
>> No, he's not in the denunciation business much.  I think he assumes we
>> know bigotry when we see it, and he certainly doesn't make it look
>> attractive.

...to which Tom Stanton sez

>Uh, I think Pynchon is very much in the denunciation business. In
>V and GR the Hereros are used very carefully to denounce colonialism
>and the supposition of European cultural superiority. He denounces
>Von Braun using Pokler & tells us later to "look high, not low."
>As we go through GRGR I see lots of denouncements of science.

Yeah, I got worried about that sloppy statement as soon as I posted it.  
You're right. 

>Not a bigoted author at all, & nothing racist in any of his texts.
>But he did express the values of his generation, and they were not
>nearly as PC as those in Vineland. And that's one reason why I love
>GR and only like Vineland, and why I have both anticipation and
>a certain fear of what Mason & Dixon might bring....

Mmm... I think that much more than expressing the values of his 
generation, Pynchon works with the language and cultural patterns of the 
period he's writing about.  Can't wait to see what he does with 
19th-century America!

Cheers,
David