The Secret Integration (was re: Prosthetic Paradise

[rj]

Shelley's 'Frankenstein' is a Gothic fantasy, one enclosing a cautionary
moral no doubt, but a fiction composed to entertain. 'The Secret
Integration' (publ. 1964) has a far more immediate social agenda, and
was itself perceived as a weapon for change within the American Civil
Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Pynchon, idealistic here as in
'A Journey Into the Mind of Watts' and perhaps enticed by the American
cult of youth and early 'sixties hippie mentality as well, depicts a
spontaneous change in racial attitudes which occurs within the space of
a generation. The logic of innocence, the lessons of experience, the
honesty of youth: these things nurture in the children of Mingeborough
feelings of defiance towards, and eventually a rejection of, the racist
preconceptions and behaviours of their parents and the society and
culture at large (eg as disclosed in Tom Swift). This "integration" is a
secret *education* as well, one which extends beyond the warm hearth and
security of the family unit.

The story's "less responsible surrealism", and the junkshop-assemblage
quality of the writing are subsidiary features. Carl Barrington is an
imaginary boy, but the Barringtons themselves are real enough. In the
nuisance calls and trash dumped on their lawn Tim recognises the "shadow
half of his family's life". He and his friends (and we, or, the
contemporary reader at least) are aghast at this revelation of such
apparently ingrained intolerance and prejudice in this suburban American
enclave, a microcosm of the American community at large. Their attitudes
and behaviours (and ours, it is to be hoped) undergo a radical change as
a result.

best