Children of the Revolution?

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 10:53 AM
Subject: Re: Children of the Revolution?


> on 23/6/03 10:56 AM, Richard Fiero at rfiero at pophost.com wrote:
>
> > I can see that we're in for a deluge of anti-60's stuff.
>
> Including _Vineland_ itself, which is, in large part, a satiric portrait
of
> student "revolutionaries" in America in the 60s. And it's part and parcel
of
> Pynchon's ongoing critique of Leftist ideologies and political movements,
> and of "phony antifascists" in general.
>

It's a much more mild & friendly criticism than you're trying to make of it,
Rob. The real criticism (the other part of VL) is his anti-fascism, his
anti-capitalism, anti-Puritanism, his criticism of structures that even
could turn the USA into a proto-fascist state (which America was in the late
sixties, early seventies).

In the end the hippies were just humans, like everyone else bound to error
and failure. It's just an ideology but what makes "socialism" more
sympathetic than every other ideology is that it has a generally positive
view of humans, contrary to capitalism that sees humans only as part of the
production line & as consumers and fascism that sees humans as generally bad
& egoistic who must be terrorised to serve the state.

Which is why I like Orwell's "Left of the Left"- notion.

Love & Peace

Otto