Vineland underrated

[Jasper Fidget]

On
> Behalf Of Carvill John

> 
> To be honest, I find it incredible that anyone could read Pynchon in
> general, and Vineland in particular, without realising that Pynchon's
> political sympathies are, at the very least, broadly left-wing. The
> convenient fact, for those of a right-wing persuasion, that some of the
> left-wing characters, eg. Frenesi, 'sell out' should not obscure that what
> characters with their own human weaknesses and imperfections sell out to,
> is
> essentially evil. In Vineland, I feel that Pynchon's sympathies with the
> counter-cultural movement of the 1960s, of which he was surely a part, are
> simply displayed more openly or explicitly than previously. And this may
> in
> fact be the answer to my original question: the book is unpopular with
> right-wing Pynchon fans, a category I had not previously known to exist,
> because it leaves no doubt in the reader's mind as to the political views
> of
> the author. As well as offering a sad account of the ultimate failure of
> the
> traditional left and the student radicals to combine their forces during
> the
> 60s, it paints a depressing but accurate picture of the Reagan years, a
> decade where the right became even more extreme and the left, most notably
> among the youth, pretty much fizzled out and died.
> 
> It's a curious phenomenon: a right-wing reader doesn't like an author's
> politics, but instead of switching to another author, he simply changes
> the
> author's politics for him! Who next will you be claiming wasn't left-wing?
> Bill Hicks?


Here it is again!  Why do people keep using these terms "left-wing" and
"right-wing"?  What do these terms mean?  Are these terms, these categories,
these shortcuts important to Pynchon?  Are they actually useful in coming to
understand his work?  Somebody explain it to me.

JF