SLSL Intro "[In] The Way of Communication"

[jbor]

on 10/11/02 12:37 PM, Dave Monroe at davidmmonroe at yahoo.com wrote:

> The following two sentences are nigh unto non
> sequiturs unless one (e.g., me, you, whoever) reads
> that that "perhaps we should have been" as looking
> back on the "limited" "success of the 'new left,'" on
> that "failure of college kids and blue-collar workers
> to get together politically," as a result of "real,
> invisible class force fields in the way of
> communication between the two groups" whose "ways of
> communication" are here positioned as analogous to
> those "at least two very different kinds of English"
> which aparently "we" failed even to "grop[e] after,"
> much less achieve, "any synthesis" thereof.

I know what you're saying about the segue, and don't entirely disagree. But
I still think that "class force fields" being "in the way of", meaning
blocking, "communication", isn't the same thing as talking about "the way of
communication" or "ways of communication" between the two groups. I think
what Pynchon is saying is that the two groups failed to communicate with one
another, and to become politically-unified, because of the class barriers.

And I don't know that the last two sentences are necessarily non-sequiturs
either. Had post-Beat writers (like Pynchon) tried to achieve a "synthesis"
of the various "possibilities" which the Beats, Kerouac et al. opened up for
them, then perhaps those two factions within the "new left" later in the
'60s might have had a precedent to follow. They didn't, and so they didn't.
Which probably isn't so far removed from what you're saying either.

best