meshugginah posts

[MantaRay at aol.com]

PynHeadz:

>And let's not forget that for every norCal heavy-duty dope-dealer & / or
>revolutionary, there were many, many wannabe kids just out for a good time,
>trying to talk the talk.

Ah, indeedy, the crux of the matter. Thanks for this nugget, whoever wrote
it. We are, in the end, Jules, talking about authenticity and you are basing
your judgment of a fictional work against a personal experience which you
consider authentic, not reality itself. There were, and are, posers
everywhere (that is one of the reasons there has been this backlash against
the idealism of the 60s: too many reformed-hippy Reaganites). Pynchon's
novels, although encyclopedic, are not a mirror of reality, but its
perversion, as all art is (and some of our posts, as well). 

It's like the hubbub that came up when Platoon was released. Vets were
screaming about how it wasn't like that, while others (like my dad and
uncles) had to leave in the middle because it fucked them up. The movie's
authenticity was never the issue, because any fool with half a brain could
tell it was a movie. What was the issue was how each viewer compared those
images to their own experiences; its so-called "authenticity" was then
configured around that comparison's success/failure. This is a self-absorbed
way to approach fiction, in my opinion. 

That's why I cringe when people try to tell me how misapprehended the 60s
were, all the shit they had to deal with, blah fucking blah. Whatever. Shit
hasn't changed. Things have worsened. The 60s are over. All these posers
(like Clinton himself) who were fighting the good fight don't amount to
anything when they step aside from those beliefs and screw the rest of us. 

MantaRay

P.S. Am I the only twentysomething on this list?