VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization

[Terrance]

> >   "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.
> 
> 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.

What do you make of that bit about the post-Beats (including Pynchon) 
seeing deeper, in to what was a sane and decent affirmation of what we
all want to believe about American values? 

Sure don't sound like no smash the fascist state radicals to me. 

SG: So as you watched this younger, boomer generation in the 1960s, what
was your response?
AG: I thought that the spiritual liberation aspect and the artistic
purity was being
somewhat degraded by the Marxist, SDS, Weatherman strain of
politicalization on
the basis of rising up angry. Anger was not the answer....



http://www.life.com/Life/boomers/ginsberg.html