VLVL Count Drugula, or Mucho the Munificent

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 5:39 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL Count Drugula, or Mucho the Munificent
>
> >
> > The critique of the 60s counterculture, its hedonism, drug use and
political
> > naivete is of course there. The political naivete goes into two
directions,
> > the belief that the most powerful government on earth could be defeated
by
> > wearing flowers in your hear, and the belittlement of the crimes of the
> > countries of the "real existing socialism."
>
> What about the fact that what started out as a non-violent and
> constructive civil rights and equal rights and worker's rights movement,
> and as a free speech movement, and a  stop the war movement, a stop the
> military industrial complex on campus movement, was usurped by violent
> and selfish idiots, by sex drugs and rock and roll? Was it hedonism,
> drugs and political naiveté? Is that what Pynchon depicts in VL?
>
> Not at all.

Like I said before it's been political naivete to believe that the
military-industrial complex could be defeated by love & peace. But of course
it's been widespread knowledge back in those days that you first have to
free yourself before you can free the slaves. Make yourself free of the
puritan programming.

You've forgotten the Vietnam War in your words above. It's in the novel and
Zoyd forgets it only on the day of his wedding. What about the murders of
Martin Luther King and Robert Kenndy? The violence did not start in the
movement, it came from the government. We see it in the novel that the gun
that kills Weed Atman was delivered by Brock.

>
> Frenesi is not naive. Is she? Is DL a hedonist? Is that why she like to
> kick ass? The Pisk sisters are political animals. They are not naive.
> They are too smart for there own good. Hell, these kids all meet up at
> Berkeley.  They make movies, they read about Marxist revolutions.

Of course Frenesi is naive. She wants to get Brock and live with the "folks
on the hill," but she ends up as a secret service prostitute.

> They misread the nation. They are not naive.

1.What is misreading the nation in the case of the USA during the Vietnam
War?
2. If they are misreading the nation (as you claim) this is the proof of
their naivete.

> They are arrogant. They know way too much.

Of course, contrary to the "normal" citizen who is kept in stupidity. That's
why US-governments like throwing bombs on countries the average citizen
can't pronounce or is unable to locate on the globe.

> They are young. They have no patience and they are closed
> minded,

Given the ongoing war and the violence against the rebellious youth and the
black communities be impatient is justified. It is not the movement that is
the original source of the violence.

> but they are not innocent.

No, they are not. Rex is right in his discussion with Weed (232).

> They believe in violent confrontation

Contrary to the hippies they believe that violence can only be confronted
with violence.

> and they believe that they are better, smarter, braver, than the worker,
> and their parent's generation. They are a ship of fools.

Interesting picture, that "ship of fools" because it is from Sebastian Brant
(1458?-1521). Brant achieved great fame through his satirical poem "Das
Narrenschiff" (The Ship of Fools, 1494), which tells of a shipload of 112
people looking for a fools' paradise. They all die because of their errant
behavior. Each character represents a vice or folly of Brant's time. The
time is the time of Reformation and the German Peasant War, Martin Luther
and the much more radical Thomas Müntzer being the main protagonists. Luther
got a deal with the aristocrats, Müntzer was executed after the battle of
Frankenhausen 1525.

> In a comic
> satire like VL, we are invited to laugh at both Zoyd and Hector. If you
> can't. if you continue to read Hector as an evil police man fascist and
> Zoyd as a victim, you won't get much out of the book.

Not Hector, but Brock Vond. Hector is the "I'm only doing my job"-type of
guy who believes in American values like having a home and an intact family.
Which is why he calls Sasha to get Prairie. But Zoyd of course is a victim
of Brock Vond's crimes. Nobody can deny that the novel just tells this.

Otto