was Re: VLVL (6) Brock

[Don Corathers]

> I'm not sure what your complaint is any more but, getting back to the
novel,
> what are the student radicals and/or hippies actually shown to be doing?

All right, I will try to play along here. We were talking about your
assertion that "hippiedom," by which I understand you to mean the sixties
counterculture generally and its particular representatives in the novel,
are held responsible by Pynchon for creating the conditions that made
possible the excesses and follies of U.S. policy during the period. You
mention specifically Vietnam and official racism. You cite passages from
Pynchon essays that discuss real-world concerns and connect them--tenuously,
I think--to some of the objects of satire in Vineland.

This theory is offered in the context of discussing judgments and moral
guideposts presented to the reader by the implied author of the text. I know
you will correct me if I'm misreading you, but it seems to me that a
foundation of your approach to the novel as expressed in this argument is
that when Pynchon applies satire to something, he's telling us it's bad.

But Pynchon satirizes almost everything and everybody that crosses the stage
in Vineland. Most of the humor is gentle and affectionate. I would suggest
that it's when the humor stops, that's when we should pay attention. Brock,
for example, is not funny at all.

What the students at San Narciso were doing, to finally get around to
answering your question, was studying civics, and getting beat up by cops.

Don


----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 8:24 PM
Subject: Re: was Re: VLVL (6) Brock


> on 30/9/03 12:39 AM, gumbo at fuse.net at gumbo at fuse.net wrote:
>
> > Some--generally people who were outside the counterculture and
dismissive of
> > it--used the word to mean anybody who smoked dope and let their hair
grow long
> > in the sixties. I think Pynchon would employ the term more precisely
than that
>
>
> best
>
>