was Re: VLVL (6) Brock (edited)

[Don Corathers]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo at fuse.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 12:36 AM
Subject: Re: was Re: VLVL (6) Brock


> > 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,
> is 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 comedy stops, that's when we should pay attention.
Brock,
> for example, is not funny at all. Frenesi isn't a bit funny.
>
> 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
> >
> >
>