Pynchonian Rorschach

[David Casseres]

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