Vineland underrated

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename at verizon.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 3:11 AM
Subject: RE: Vineland underrated
>
> 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

Well, Zoyd is a left-winged hippie longing for anarchy and freedom and Brock
Vond is a "criminally insane" right-winged cop who wants control.

Control is an important topic in GR too, read the Rathenau-parts.

Control is the essence of every totalitarianism, left or right.

Pynchon is as critical of the "official left" as Orwell has been. He's left
of the left. That's the freedom a novelist can permit himself without being
forced to show practical alternatives.

"The success of the "new left" later in the '60's was to be limited by the
failure of college kids and blue-collar workers to get together politically.
One reason was the presence of real, invisible class force fields in the way
of communication between the two groups."
(Introduction to "Slow Learner," p. 7)

Otto