was Re: VLVL (6) Brock

[jbor]

on 30/9/03 2:36 PM, Don Corathers at gumbo at fuse.net wrote:

> 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.

Those real world concerns are in the novel too, of course:

    War in Vietnam, murder as an instrument of American politics, black
    neighborhoods torched to ashes and death, all must have been off on
    some other planet. (38.18-20)

Point here is, the hippies and/or student radicals aren't noticing. And the
tone and mode of this interpolation is not "gently satiric" at all, the
effect (and intention, I'd suggest) far from humourous.

I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that the hippies and/or student
radicals Pynchon depicts in _Vineland_ are a part of that "failure of public
will" during "the Vietnam era" he identifies in the 'Sloth' essay. You
disagree; it's no big deal.

As for the rest, I don't know who you're arguing against, but it isn't me.

best


> 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.