Children of Darkness (was Re: VLVL(6) - The Children of the 60's)

Sebastian Dangerfield sdangerfield at juno.com
Thu Dec 10 09:27:43 CST 1998


Some "Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season."

On Wed, 9 Dec 1998 09:54:33 -0800 David Morris writes:

>Try to imagine our present without that past.  Far from vain, the 
>revolution won many battles.  The hemorrhage in Vietnam was stopped. 
> Tricky Dick was booted.  Many prohibitions were swept out the door as 
>it was opened to let in so many new possibilities.  Many vanities 
>indulged along the way, certainly, but all those possibilities once
glimpsed, 
>could not be completely squelched, and we are the richer for their
advent 
>into the common consciousness.

Agreed.  I for one would like living in this part of our century much
less if it weren't for the events of roughly '64-'72.  And yes that big
"V" that is the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial would be a whole lot bigger if
folks hadn't taken to the streets (how many of us on the list might be
named on that monument had the war dragged on I shudder to think).  

As I made an effort to clarify earlier, I certainly did not mean to cast
aspersions on the many accomplishments of those various acts of human
agency that we, for a convenient shorthand, call 'the movement,' but I
fully understand how one might read my submissions thus.

More importantly, nor do think that Pynchon is giving 'the movement'  in
toto an old curmudgeon's dismissive "Humbug!".  (As I recall, some
contemporary reviewers had tarred the P-man with the neocon brush upon
the appearance of VL, but I think they failed to appreciate complexity). 


But . . . 

Although I do not think that VL can be enlisted in aid of the
neoconservative assault on the Sixties (not at least without a struggle),
I adhere to my view that VL is at least in part "about" debunking or at
least questioning the romantic Myth of the Sixties (while at times, as
someone saliently chimed in, also indulging that nostalgic
reverie--"celebrating the romance that was").  The likes of Todd Gitlin,
who has made something of an academic cottage industry out of nostalgia,
have given us a Mythos of a Sixties 'movement' that is more coherent,
unified, focused, and perhaps even a bit more effective than the slightly
more messy reality.  In the romanticized view, there were few who were
just along for the ride.  In VL, I believe, it's the other way around. 
Brock directs his 'genius' not at the 10% who are in it for real ("we
always knew how to deal with them"), but ot the other 90%--"amateurs,
consumers, short attention spans, out there for the thrills, pick up a
chick, score some dope, nothing political."  (270.28-.29).  These are the
corruptible ones, "easy to turn and cheap to develop."  (269.12-.13)

And I think it is to that 90% that VL directs our attention.  

While showing us that the 'movement' was not always so sophisticated,
sometimes being a thoughtless attraction to a cult of personality,
riddled with internal divisions. It  also points to the generational rift
that developed in the left.  Sasha's contempt for Zoyd's doperhood is a
tiny parable of the sad division between much of the Old Left--with roots
in the more progressive side of organized labor--and the new.  The
relationship between the two is a lot more complex than the traditional
image of hard-hats going after peaceniks in NYC in 1970 suggests, for in
the beginning, groups like SDS and SNCC had direct organizational,
financial and personal ties with such progressive elements of the labor
movement as the UAW and the Packing-house workers and the Industrial
Union Department of the AFL-CIO (it's no accident that the Port Huron
Statement came out of Northern Michigan, where Victor Reuther helped
secure support for SDS from his dad Walter, prez of the UAW and "The Most
Dangerous Man in Detroit").  The Vietnam war, and the 'counterculture'
eventually tore the two asunder.  The AFL-CIO had wedded itself to the
Dems, and to the Cold War (with its attendant very hot wars), a marriage
prearranged with the '55 merger of the AFL with the erstwhile more
progressive CIO, which, under Reuther's leadership, purged its leftists
in order to join the AFL fold.  There is more than a little of this
suggested in the novel.  Sasha, the old school progressive laborite, Zoyd
the countercultural type, and Hub, the left-leaning working stiff who has
to worry about feeding his kid, and has to join IATSE (an old AFL union
of the worst kind) despite his qualms about its political impurity
through its supprt of the blacklists.  (And isn't it that act that
precipitates the Hub/Sasha rift?)  

And VL certainly also raises questions about the vaunted liberatory power
of the S,D,&R&R Trinity: examples:  Sex (linked to death and betrayal),
drugs (Zoyd's amiable doperhood certainly doesn't lead to any epiphanies
and arguably makes him, and therefore, Prairie, much more vulnerable to,
say, the depredations of Vond and his use of the  War-on-Drugs legal
armamentarium), Rock-n-Roll (stay tuned for the reappearance of Mucho
Maas).  Reminds me (again) of Gnossos, who seeks enlightenment through
these avenues but does not find it . . . 

It is interesting that the novel's exploration of the Sixties is effected
through Prairie, the '80s teen who is trying to find out what her legacy
is.   She finds that legacy to be pretty dark.  

As was discussed heavily earlier in our exploration fo the novel, the
question "Who was saved?" is critical.  I do not think that the novel
gives us a simplisic answer such as "nobody" (if it gives us an answer at
all).  VL gets us questioning whether the Era was all "about" ending the
war, registering black voters in the South, etc.  It does this by
countering the romanic myth and exploring those "vanities indulged along
the way."  

The other question, as Peter posted earlier, VL asks of the Adult
Children of the Sixties, and of the Child Children of the Sixties, such
as Prairie, is "how do we grow up."  Doug replied, "We only get pointers
towards an answer in VL." 

>Childish were the children of the sixties, 
>but Jesus suffered the little children to come to him...
>
Well, Jesus is just all right with me . . . but I'll opt for something
more contemporary:

"For we are the children of darkness
And the prey of a proud, proud land."

Is Pynchon condemning the Children of Darkness? No.  Is he exploring
their human condition?  Prob'ly.

Peace,

Sebastian
(who don't want to walk and talk about Jesus
but really digs "Reflections in a Crystal Wind")
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