VLVL Count Drugula, or Mucho the Munificent

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> >> -- 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  his satire's  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; 

It's not so simple. The mild satire of Thanatoid sloth is only part of
the satire of the Thanatoids. The Thanatoids really quite sick, they can
not find it in their hearts to forgive those who have trespassed against
them. The Thanatoids are addicted to Revenge. For this, they are
subjected to scathing satire.  


 Take a look at P's essay "Nearer, my Couch, to Thee." Notice that 
the word "sloth, not unlike P's use of other terms like "fascism" and
"luddism,"  carries lots of different meanings.  P certainly identifies
with the Slothful Writer and the couch potato American. However, notice
his  moral tone in the paragraph about political sloth, where, sounding
like the good catholic he says, 

Fiction and nonfiction alike are full of characters who fail to
do what they should because of the effort involved. How can we not
recognize
our world? Occasions for choosing good present themselves in public and
private for us every day, and we pass them by. 

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html


middle-aged dope-smoking hippies are satirized 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.

Where in SL  does Pynchon characterize himself as a dope smoking hippy?