VLVL (6) Pynchon's parables

[Terrance]

Mike Weaver wrote:
> 
> I don't know US history well enough to give examples

Do you like VL, Mike? Sounds to me like you don't like the book. It's
not a history book. It's not a political book. It's a fairy tale. 

It's actually not bad if you read it with your spine. Although, as one
of our more astute readers of Fiction noted, parts of it read like bad
television (i.e.,  how the sound during the commercials gets so loud
that you want to turn it off) and B material programing  slapped
together with scab labor. 



In the US, people of the Left have a hard time comprehending the nature
of American
Conservatism. They tend to perceive it not as an intellectual movement
worthy of intellectual respect but as merely a front for greed and
self-indulgence.

That's pretty much what we get in VL. While Pynchon rips pages out of
Labor History and pastes them onto Prairie's family tree, focusing on
the reasons for the successes and failures of the Left, he doesn't give
his conservatives a single thought. 

As a critique of the Right, Reagan Revolution and the like, VL sucks.
Why preach to the converted? BV is some kind of Ollie North/Captain
Amerika. We can all read US History and the daily news to find out what
the Reagan administrations have failed to do in in the US and in Latin
America and so on. 

But now we are into the very best part of the book. 

That's right folks
don't touch that dial
cause I am the Mime
on your Lid E O
dancing around on your Eye's operculum
I am the Mime on your Lid E O
Rhythmically Remming on Your fluttering flap
Tap, Tap Tap, Tap, Tap T AAAAAAAAAAAA PPPPPP