Will's Students- Cliff

[Paul Mackin]

Your synopsis of the story was fine but in the end
you conclude that events have defeated the children.
This bothers me because I don't feel you can dismiss so
easily their attempts to deal with the befuddlement over 
racism, certainly not as a complete failure. I would
see it to be a lot worse for one thing WITHOUT the
creation of that imaginary playmate. We don't know of
course how things will turn out in the end. But what
would we have thought of the boys chances in later life
in dealing with people different from themselves, say,
if they had not reacted quite negatively  to the parents'
attitudes, if they had done nothing, if they had perhaps just
accepted them as their own. Well, of course there wouldn't have
been a story then and Pynchon might have ended up with 
writer's block :-), but even beyond that I think the
prognosis for these young lives down the road might
have been a lot worse than we actually end up with.
In fact, I like to think that the use of their young
imaginations to CREATE A STORY to help deal with
their puzzlement--which seems to me what 'Carl' is
(some would call it a TEXT)--was a fairly powerful act.
It is one mankind has used down through the ages to
deal with the unknown. And since I've already injected
Pynchon himself into this critique in perhaps a less
than an appropriate way I don't feel so bad in ending
by asking if it would be too outlandish to suggest
that Pynchon as a young man might have felt rather
helpless himself to do anything about bad things he saw
around him. So he did the only thing HE could do.  He used
his talent and imagination to construct his own story,
and better still it turns out to be a story within a 
story of a couple of boys doing pretty much the same
thing as he is doing.
			
				P.

----------
From: 	WillL at fieldschool.com[SMTP:WillL at fieldschool.com]
Sent: 	Friday, May 09, 1997 6:43 PM
To: 	pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: 	Will's Students- Cliff

Date	5/9/97
Subject	Will's Students- Cliff
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

Will's Students: Cliff
WARNING: REPEAT OF INTRO . . .

Thanks again to the wonderful Pynchon List for indulging my students during this
busy time on the list (too busy, if you ask me -- I can barely read half the
list messages, much less respond).  I have asked my students to write about four
paragraphs or so about one of three stories:  TRP's "The Secret Integration,"
William Vollmann's "The Blue Wallet" (from THE RAINBOW STORIES) or James
Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues."  They will then be required to post responses to at
least three of the comments they receive from the List.

Please note that these posts are unedited by me.  Also, you should know that the
students' "central texts" this year have been THE WIZARD OF OZ (the movie), THE
SCARLET LETTER, HUCK FINN, Whitman's "Song of Myself," and THEIR EYES WERE
WATCHING GOD.  When reading THE SCARLET LETTER, they read a one page excerpt
from GRAVITY'S RAINBOW regarding heretical Puritan William Slothrop.  They are
steeped in the idea of Preterite and Elect as a metaphor for various dichotomies
in American society, as well as the idea that such dichotomies are often false
constructions.  This project in the culmination of the THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING
GOD unit, which has dealt with gender and race inequities depicted in American
Literature.

Again, we welcome your critiques, to be addressed directly to the students.

My next student is Cliff Johnson, writing about Pynchon.

*********************

Secret Integration

	The "Secret Integration" is about some kids trying to understand why the
grown-ups are doing what they are doing.  The grown-ups' primary fear is about
integrating their town.  They don't want it.  They don't want black people in
their town - they don't like them.

	The kids create an imaginary black person to be their friend to try to see what
is so bad about it.  They have this friend who is one with them.  He is black,
and he does all the things they do.  They want to integrate.  He is joining
their group; they are trying to bridge the segregation between adults and kids.

	They did things they aren't allowed to do.  They made devices of sodium and
wax.  When thrown, they caused an explosion.  They stirred up silt in the river
so it wouldn't be used for the paper mill which then had to be shut down.  They
planned to set off a smoke bomb at a PTA meeting.  They set up light at a rail
road crossing, so the green one went off instead of the read.

	All around these kids at the same time blacks have moved in.  The parents are
scared.  The kids go to the black's house to take their imaginary friend home,
and the townspeople have dumped trash in their yard.  The kids don't understand
what is happening.  They can't bridge the gap because they don't understand.

	They go to the place where they hang out and their imaginary friend leaves. 
They go home to their parents.

	The imaginary friend is really a combination of the three of them.  They don't
really know what a black guy would be like, or what he would say.  They ask Karl
if he has a color TV.  He says, "Why should I!  Oh yea!!"

	The kids don't really understand what integration is all about.  Their goal in
creating Karl is to find out, but he is not real.  He's always there until they
find the trash.

	The story is about kids trying to learn to be grown-ups - trying to learn the
issues.  In the end, it defeats them.

-- Cliff Johnson