Absences in VL

[David Casseres]

Sebastian Dangerfield sez
>...  Speaking as one who is too young to have
>absorbed much more than the Mythology of the Sixties (born in the Year of
>the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a little-known Chinese Astrological Sign)
>...
>
>I think that what I'm getting at is that part fo the VL project is
>certainly a de-mythologization of the sixties, telling us that it really
>wasn't all about the War . . . that the sixties was the outhouse of the
>postwar soul . . .  that there's not such a gulf between many
>participants of that generation as they were then and are in 1984 . . .
>that Frenesi wasn't so much seduced by the Svengali stare of BV as she
>was searching for 'order' when her viewfinder landed on him . . . that
>vanity of vanities sayeth the preacher, all is vanity . . .
>
>It's not a very nice story.  It's a pretty bitter tale.

I must differ, though not very sharply.  Though I think Pynchon is
interested in de-romanticizing the 60's -- while at the same time paying
tribute to the romance that was -- I don't think for a minute that he's
trying to debunk the anti-war effort, like certain ex-lefties from that
time who now make more money than Pynchon by telling the world How Wrong We
All Were.

Frenesi's uniform fetish certainly does indicate a secret desire for
surrender to Authority, but then so does her mom's identical fetish.  And
so does all that B&D&S&M in Gravity's Rainbow, and the Prisoner stuff in
M&D.  Pynchon is talking here about a human characteristic, not criticizing
a generation or a decade.

Certainly a great many of the marchers in the streets and sitters in
Chancellors' offices and so forth were in it for the jollies just as much
as to stop the war -- but when has that ever not been true of the
activities of young men and women?  What distinguished the 60's was the
large number of young people (and older ones) who got their jollies *by
putting their butts on the line to change things*, in addition to getting
laid, stoned, etc.  Similarly, whenever there has been a draft during an
unpopular war, there have been many who were strongly motivated to not get
drafted -- but there have not often been nearly as many who tried to avoid
the draft by going into the streets to stop the war.

Talkin bout my generation, you do have to discount the hype that surrounded
it -- but you also have to discount a lot of cynical revisionism that came
afterward, in which Pynchon is not a participant.

Cheers,
David