Fwd: Re: Review of Stephen E. Ambrose's _The Good Fight_

[Swing Hammerswing]

I have a little more faith in the Americans I guess.
I think they are not so dumb, numb, and glum.
The preterite are smarter than you think.

In his essay on M&D, Jeff Baker (I agree with Baker on some
points but I think he is confused by Pynchon's politics, much like
my dear fried Doug, he ends his essay by patting the 60s on the back and
trying to argue that the failure of the 60s revolution was a failure
but not a failure) turns to VL, he says Mucho Mass is P's much beloved 
(nope!)
and that he is helping out the "hapless antihero Zoyd Wheeler
come to terms with the death of the sixties magic."

Mucho opines:  "But acid gave us X-ray vision to see through
[the state's power over life and death], so of course
they has to take it away from us." To which Zoyd replies
"Yeah, but they can't take what happened, what we found out."
Mucho explains: "Easy. They just let us forget. Give us too
much to process, fill up every minute, keep us distracted, it's what the 
Tube is for, and though it kills me to say it, it's
what rock and roll is becoming--just another way to
claim our attention, so that beautiful certainty we had starts to
fade, and after a while they have us convinced all over again that
we really are going to die."

Baker goes on to discuss the river lethe round AMerica/Hell
and how P is hard on Dixon and Mason, but what about
Zoyd and his "beloved Mucho Mass"?

Keep you doped on religion and sex and tv
but you're only carpenters as far as I can see
an anti-american intellectual is something to be
an anti-intellectual american is something to be











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