Fw: Pynchon, the Beats & "conservative American Values"

[Jerky]

Perhaps it would help bolster your claim that Pynchon is a "conservative" if
you were to define, exactly, what it is you mean by "conservative." Then we
could base our individual conclusions as to whether or not your analysis is
correct based on an understanding of what it is you mean, exactly, by
"conservative."

Do you think TRP, for instance, supports the Bush administration and its
current efforts in Iraq?

Do you think TRP is a neoconservative hawk?

Do you think he supports the Bush/Cheney tax policy? Or is Pynchon a
flat-tax conservative? Or a "taxation-is-theft" right-wing libertarian?

Do you think he supports the enshrinement of a specifically discriminatory,
anti-gay amendment to the American Constitution?

Do you think he's anti-choice?

Because frankly, I could name you any number of fathers, husbands and
respected members of the community who would laugh out loud if you dared
call them "conservative."

By calling him "conservative", could you really be meaning to say that
Pynchon is (shudder) "bourgeois"?

Cheers!
YOPJ


> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 12, 2004 1:39 PM
> Subject: Re: Pynchon, the Beats & "conservative American Values"
>
>
> >
> >
> > Jerky wrote:
> > >
> > > I always got more of a "let's get our shit together, people" kind of
> vibe
> > > from VL, rather than the "you lefties suck ass" vibe you seem to be
> picking
> > > up on.
> > >
> > > But that's just me.
> >
> > It seems to me that the assumption that P is a dissident Lefty or a get
> > you shit together people Lefty  is not supported by the facts of his
> > life, his prose, his fictions. He is critical of the both the Left and
> > the Right. VL argues that the two (Left and Right) are married, dance
> > partners, S&M lovers. The assumption that, with no way out of the bind,
> > Pynchon advocates or at least has personally assumed a Left of the Left
> > posture is not supported by anything he has written, said or done. Where
> > is TRP? I think he remains pretty close to his roots and where he
> > started out. MalignD can say that I am treating P has a fixed and
> > formulated monolith, but that's not the case. He does seem to move away
> > from some of his conservative-catholic traditional ideas (the the
> > reason, I suspect,  he did not include the very conservative Mortality
> > and Mercy in Vienna in his Slow Learner collection) as early as his
> > first year at Cornell and then, of course, as he describe it in SL, gets
> > out on the road and begins opening his mind and his writing, if not his
> > conservative irish catholic/Pynchon New England heart and pocket (V.,
> > Boeing). I'm not sure how deep the love bug of the sixties bit into Tom,
> > he wasn't a kid. Now, a father and husband, respected member of the
> > community, he seems as conservative as he ever was.
> >
>