twentysomethings

Patrick Schreuder Patrick_Schreuder at mailserver.prenhall.co.uk
Mon Jul 7 09:25:45 CDT 1997


     
     Mantaboy wrote:
     
     >P.S. Am I the only twentysomething on this list?
     
     You're not alone! 
     
     PS
     
     Gershom wrote:
     
     As for the vineland crits on the NC scene, Pynch necessarily 
     exaggerates, but once again, how could anyone argue that Zoyd wasn't 
     one of the good guyz? The passage where Brock speaks about how easy it 
     was to convert the hippies was very revealing. VL isn't so much about 
     the 60s as it is about the 80s, and because the book is set in the 80s 
     it should be that much easier for us to get it. Instead, we project 
     backwards and read it as a testament of the 60s. What TRP is doing in 
     VL, in my mind at least, is examining how the 60s turned into the 80s. 
     And looking at the 80s, it's obvious that when TRP undertook this 
     task, he realized that there would be much to criticize.
     
     ---
     
     I don't like the sixties, never have, never will. All my experiences 
     with people who really liked the sixties have been bad. I don't like 
     the litt. very much, don't like the whole period basically.
     
     But, I like Pynchon. And this rather annoys me, I know that Pynchon is 
     not really a sixties writers, but still. 
     
     Vineland is probably the first novel which made me see the sixties in 
     a different light. I know that not everything in Vineland is from the 
     sixties (also lots of seventies),but by comparing the sixties with the 
     eighties (my childhood/puberty) I got a glimpse of what the sixties 
     might have been. I still don't like it very much, but i now have a 
     somewhat, dare i say, mellower view of the period and the people. 
     Maybe the book wasn't as factual as some of you hoped it was , but for 
     me it gave me the first glimpse of an age I still don't understand.
     
     Patrick S.




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