VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 6:05 AM
Subject: Re: VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization


>
>   "We were onlookers: the parade had gone by and we were already getting
>   everything secondhand, consumers of what the media at the time were
>   supplying us. This didn't prevent us from adopting Beat postures and
>   props, and eventually as post-Beats coming to see deeper into what,
>   after all, was a sane and decent affirmation of what we all want to
>   believe about American values. When the hippie resurgence came along
> ten
>   years later, there was,  for a while anyway, a sense of nostalgia and
>   vindication.  Beat prophets were resurrected, people started playing
>   alto sax and electric guitars, the wisdom of the East cam back in
>   fashion. It was the same, only different.

What is interesting is that he calls Beats and Hippies both "forms of the
movement" -- the movement obviously is something that hasn't got to have any
kind of organization or defined party as for example socialism or communism.
It's more like a state of mind and therefor it can persist until a new
"form" (the Hippie) emerges, even if its actual "form" (the Beat) is
disintegrating.

The hippies knew that there's nothing new under the sun (except what we have
forgotten) and saw themselves as heirs of the Beat-movement. Generally the
same, only different. The problems and general political and social
circumstances both forms of the movements were confronted with were
essentially the same.

>   On the negative side, however, both forms of the movement placed too
>   much emphasis on youth, including the eternal variety.
>
>   Slow Learner Introduction. 9 & 10
>

Who could deny that. But it seems to be a special, maybe inevitable
character of so-called "youth movements".

Pynchon was too young for the Beats and too old for the Hippies. This is
pitiable and lucky the same. Makes him kind of a bridging figure and enables
him to see things more clearly than people actually involved in any of the
forms of the movement.

Otto