Imperishable worth blowing in the wind

[Terrance]

"Orwell, having lived among the working and unemployed poor of the
1930s depression, and learned in the course of it their true
imperishable worth, bestowed on Winston Smith a similar faith in their
1984 counterparts the proles, as the only hope for deliverance from
the dystopian hell of Oceania." 

Pynchon's Foreword to Orwell's _1984_

Pynchon, out on the road, literally working as a contract laborer on the
road. 
What will he learn? 

Benny doesn't learn a thing. 

Benny has this sympathy, this empathy, this
thing for the year he was born, for the Great Depression and
the outcasts. Remember that Benny wears Fina's father's suit, a
Depression
suit. 

Fina gets him an interview at Outlandish Records. He puts on Mr.
Mandoza's suit, "circa
  mid-'30s, double breasted..." Mr. Mandoza is unemployed.
  

Under the Street, while on the subway, "he decided that we
  suffer from great temporal homesicknesses for the decade we
  were born in." 

When Benny  arrives at Outlandish, a
  messenger tells him, forget the job and listen to the wind.
  He listens to the wind, he sees the wind, he decides that
  the suit cannot "conceal this curious depression which
  showed up in no stock market or year-end reports." He heads
  out into the wind. 

Outside, the bums in the wind listen to Sphere play. 

  Depression time for Benny is not unreal or not any less real
  than 1955-56.  Benny chases an Alligator to Father Fairing's
  Parish, into Depression time. 



  "Every revolution has also been a betrayed revolution."
  Marcuse