VLVL2 (1): Rushdie review of Vineland

[pynchonoid]

Thanks for the Rushdie reminder, Tim. He puts his
finger directly on the reason why so many of the
Reagan babies have a hard time dealing with Pynchon's
subversive politics, as expressed so forthrightly in
Vineland, the Slow Learner intro, and the Foreword to
_1984_. So many of their parents were co-opted in the
Nixon years, then their kids swallowed the Reagan-Bush
line whole, for all the reasons presented in Vineland
-- addiction to a Tube that reinforces the need to
sustain a police state and snitch culture, little or
no awareness of the facts of US history, drug
addiction thanks to the flood of cocaine and other
drugs facilitated by Bush and his CIA, etc. To the
point that we now see some Pynchon readers justifying
an obscene colonial war demanded by corporate death
merchants, and even suggesting that Pynchon would
support Bush's so-called "war on terrorism" -- the
kind of war that appears to have made Pynchon's skin
crawl as he sublimated his rage against the Cold War
doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and against
the Vietnam War by writing _Gravity's Rainbow_. 



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com