VLVL Count Drugula, or Mucho the Munificent

[jbor]

>> -- but there has been a constant attempt to gloss over or evade the
>> obvious
>> criticisms of the 60s counterculture which the novel *also* presents.

Terrance:
> Does the novel critique the 60s counterculture? Why would Pynchon
> bother? 

Why not? Your denial is somewhat undermined by the subsequent post where you
cite many of the criticisms which are present in the novel: the way "the
Movement" was hijacked by selfish, violent egotists like the Pisks; the way
the anti-war and civil rights causes were completely forgotten by '68-9; the
way drugs, sex and rock'n'roll devolved into base mediums of exchange rather
than the symbols of rebellion they started off as.

> Are s his satire  corrective and normative.

"Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover
everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of
reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended by it."

I don't think Pynchon's satire fits neatly into either box; in fact, I don't
think it's either/or between "corrective" and "normative" satire, or that
these are the only two possibilities for what satire can be. I'd say
Pynchon's mode is more akin to Fredric Jameson's conception of "blank irony"
(and "pastiche"). Generally speaking, Pynchon doesn't place himself or his
reader above the actions, behaviours and attitudes which are satirised in
the texts: e.g., the Thanatoids are satirised but Pynchon announces his own
Thanatoid pedigree in the way his text revels in its tv references and
imagery; middle-aged dope-smoking hippies are satirised but Pynchon
characterises himself as, nearly enough, one of that crew (in the
contemporaneous _Slow Learner_ 'Intro') etc. There's criticism there, but
more often than not it's inclusive, self-conscious, even at times
ambivalent. 

> In other words, if
> P's satires  appeal to some consensus on values, what are those values?

Generally speaking, I don't think the values are fixed, and I don't think
there is ever a "consensus of values" which can be nailed down, or that
that's the aim or raison d'être of the fiction. Characters are
multi-faceted, events and actions are viewed from different perspectives and
through different lenses, debates proceed dialectically through the texts
without definitive resolution.

> Scoff at my assertion that Pynchon is a conservative and a Catholic.
> But that's what people tell me and that's what I read in his books.

I've only ever seen you make this assertion. Would you care to provide
another reference to support the claim?

On the other issue, I think Pynchon has used the terms "fascism" and
"fascist" in reference to the USA and its leaders (and wartime Great Britain
in the Orwell 'Intro' as well, for example) often enough now to grant that
he thinks it's apt to do so, and that comparisons between Hitler and
Roosevelt, or Pol Pot and Kissinger, are valid ones. It's not necessary to
applaud his loose appropriation of these terms, of course, or the corollary
trivialisation of historical genocides it implies.

best