Pynchonian Rorschach
David Casseres
casseres at apple.com
Mon Jul 7 13:09:19 CDT 1997
Jules sez
>You've got this all wrong. The Sixties wasn't a generation it was a period
>of time. I wasn't a member of some age group.
You're only partly right. The 60's was a period of time AND it was the
experience of that period by a particular age cohort. I (born in 41) was
right on the trailing edge of that cohort, and if I'm right about your
age you were behind it. Doesn't disqualify you from talking about the
60's, obviously, but it guarantees that you (like Pynchon!) saw some of
it as an outsider. For example, did you have to sweat the draft?
>By your definition none of the Chicago Seven, including Abbie Hoffman (born
>in 1936) would be part of the Sixties.
There you're 100% right, and they belong to yet another subgroup, the
full-time activists. Closer to your own experience, probably.
For my part, I helped start a commune that wanted to be activist but
never got its act together. Somewhere in between these other
experiences, you see.
But then there's all those lost, fucked-over, preyed-upon flower
children. Well not all that many of them actually. You knew them, I
knew them, but they've never really been heard friom since. And then
there's all those guys who did go to Vietnam, a whole spectrum of them.
And then there's the vast majority of Americans of all ages whose
experience of the 60's you and I know nothing about because all they ever
have to say is when they vote for a Reagan or a Clinton. But they might
have a story to tell.
>My identification is not necessarily with some diffuse Sixties mentality but
>with a very specific subculture that existed in Northern California and
>elsewhere called communalism, in which I was very active. Pynchon
>caricatures this subculture directly and indirectly in his works.
So what I'm trying to get at is that even in the little world of Northern
California, nobody ever owned the 60's experience by himself. Not
Pynchon, not you, and not me either. I think it highly appropriate for
Pynchon, and you, and me to say what the 60's were like, but it's a huge
mistake to try to tell people what they were *not* like.
>How about right and wrong spelling, as in Siegel?
Or Caesuras.
Cheers,
David
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list