FW: Safe children

[Gillies, Lindsay]

=============ronkarate quotes from vineland:
>Brock saw the deep...need only to stay children forever, safe inside some 
extended national family.
=============hg notes that this is
"the key to unravel much of TRPs attitude towards the sixties
"in general, and the USA-dominated post-WW2 zone in particular (in
"_all_ his works).
=============jsevers:
Almost all Pynchon characters are born into
their worlds premature. Your pointing out this passage reminds me of a
question I had while recently rereading Vineland: what's to be made of the
persistence of adolescent characters in the Pynchon corpus?
=============ron:
they are actually fighting for stasis, or, more
correctly, a return to the insulated authoritarian trust of the Eisenhower
era.
=============al wang:
Is the key a yearning for adolescence, or does it cover a bit more ground?
How does that tie in with the Vineland women's sexual attraction towards
authority?  I think it's the familial bonds that are really being stressed,
a longing for the security of the All-American family of old...
 ---------------------------------------
As an exdenizen of those times, I think Brock's vision is deeply, though 
only partly, true.  Hg's note sets me thinking on the ubiquity of the theme 
of dominance/submission, a-and masochism in general.  So many instances 
spring to mind, even the boiled sweets episode that, like Nigel, makes me 
roar each time even though I know its coming.  Both wars (our only "world" 
wars so far---) are in this view used as frames for a narrative strategy 
that bases itself on the almost universal compulsion these  historical 
events imply.  Are there any characters in these works who are not 
struggling under the sway of an authority or compulsion?