VLVL (6) Pynchon's parables

[Mike Weaver]

Rob wrote
>But perhaps you'd like to address those passages you've been studiously
>trying to avoid:

You and Terrance have more than your anti-leftism in common, you both think 
you can see the ideological machinations behind my reading and 
contributions. Sorry mateys it's more to do with limited time than 
calculation, my trash file contains plenty of responses I never had time to 
finish - you just get to read the ones I'm just about happy to put my name to.

>  the one about Frenesi and the lead-up to Watergate (71-2),
A further comment on the immaturity of the Woodstock generation - freedom 
as lack of responsibility - what was it Don quoted from the SL intro "too 
much concentration on youth, especially the eternal kind..." (cf Gnossos' 
'immunity' in Been Down So Long)


>or where Sasha, with a "right" to be "bitter", describes how "[e]veryone
>they knew" during the '50s "sold out" everybody else, when they all "made up
>a different story" (81.7-25)?

And I'm the one being accused of not reading the book! The text reads

"Everyone they knew had made up a different story, to make each of them 
come out looking better and others worse. "History in this town," Sasha 
muttered, "is no more worthy of respect than the average movie script, and 
it comes about in the same way..."

No reference to everyone selling out everyone else, her bitterness  relates 
to the burying of the actual history and emotions of the time by a typical 
Hollywood rewrite version created by all the participants to make 
themselves look better. The phrase "heartfelt language gets pounded flat 
when it isn't just removed forever" suggests real commitments and an 
honourable resistance to the anti-communist tide which have become hidden 
history.