SLSL Intro: Pynchon on class barriers WAS Re: SLSL Intro "Chicago School"

[pynchonoid]

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>describes this in terms of the "sane and
> decent affirmation of
> what we all want to believe about American values"
> both movements or eras
> represented. I think these values are pretty
> mainstream ones, like freedom
> of speech, democracy, inclusiveness, civil rights,

All well and good, as far as it goes, but Pynchon's
insistence on an  analysis based explicitly on class
is what takes him out of the US mainstream which
refuses to acknowledge that elephant in the living
room.  TRP places himself in a long line of people who
find find fundamental flaws in US culture and
criticize it sharply in an effort to help it live up
to its democratic promise -- the kind of patriotic
social critics that some propagandists have always
termed "America haters".

If class differences and class barriers are real -- as
Pynchon says they are in the SL Intro -- then the
"American Dream", that anybody can be anybody and do
anything, all free and equals, is a sham.  Pynchon
rises above the propaganda -- the media fog that, in
the face of massive evidence to the contrary, insists
that class barriers don't exist in the US. and what
passes for  debate among the mainstream US political
parties and commentators --  and zeroes in on the very
real class differences that divide people in the US.
In so doing, he aligns himself with a group that has
always been present in US, and which has always been, 
marginalized over the years.

-Doug






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<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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