VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization

[Kent Mueller]

The "conservative American values" referred to aren't, I think, the "Gods, Guns and Gays" of the current evil union of
Religious fundamentalists and corporate oligarchs, or even the Goldwater politics of Kerouac's declining years.  Kerouac
and Burroughs were both dominated by a nostalgia for an America that never really existed, in which one was free to mind
one's own business, free of governmental meddling, free in thought and, as long as it was kept private, free in actions.
 More of a Libertarian or Whitmanesque view than anything else.

Kerouac was a conservative Catholic archpatriot of ambivalent sexuality who liked his drugs and inadvertently started a
social revolution through his writings that still reverberates today.

Needless to say, the real rebellion of the Beats was against a stifling conformity that was/is apolitical and corporate.
 Whatever sells; they'll trademark all the good pot brand names, televise suicides to boost ratings, overblow the
scandals on the right today (or underblow if the FCC is hovering...) as they overblew the scandals of the "left"
yesterday... 

As for Pynchon, wasn't he quoted as saying something to the effect that, "(he) was so stoned while writing parts of GR
that even I don't know what they're about"? My suspicion is he's inhaled.

I've never read anything by Pynchon that indicated his views during the '60s were any different than my older brothers
and their friends at the time, hippie mainstream (long hair, rock and roll, antiwar even if not activist, etc.) and all
indications are that his liberalism has mellowed but not fundamentally changed.  Hardly a complete Dos Passos / David
Horowitz 180.

Kent Mueller
 

----------
>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization
>Date: Mon, Apr 12, 2004, 7:35 AM
>

>
>> 
>> But they're the categories Pynchon sets up and it's the way *he's* talking
>> about the Beats. He refers to "Kerouac and the Beat writers" (6-7). He's
>> talking about his "divided" loyalties, about ultimately seeing "deeper" into
>> the "Beat sensibility" as a "sane and decent affirmation" of "American
>> values", about the initial years of the "hippie resurgence" being a
>> "vindication". I don't accept that the Beat "values" he's referring to are
>> consistent with "conservative" ones; if they are, then why were his
>> "loyalties divided" between what he was reading and "the more established
>> modernist tradition we were being exposed to in college"? The "Beat
>> sensibility" was an anti-Establishment one, surely?
>> 
>> > Keruoac or Butowski. Since P mentions the former we
>> > should do well to remember that Jack was a conservative Catholic
>> > American patriot who supported the war in Vietnam.
>> 
>> I can't see how this has anything to do with the _SL_ Intro, or Pynchon's
>> own attitude towards the Vietnam War.
>
>
>My point here is that Pynchon describes himself as a rather conservative
>young man and those on this List who argue that he was a Beat or Beatnik
>or pot-smoking hippie are talking through their hats or confusing the
>author with his characters. Moreover, there is simply no evidence that
>Tom Pynchon was or is a member of some sort of dissident Left (P
>describes Orwell as a member of the dissident Left). Those claiming this
>political characterization appear to be assuming that his interest in
>Orwell is proof of his political affinity.  Lots of conservative
>thinkers were opposed to the war in Vietnam and to racism. Lots of
>catholic or ex-catholic conservatives  supported civil rights and the
>working class struggle during the 60s. These labels and categories
>(poorly defined) are worthless. The loud left and the radical left tends
>to get the press and hog the spot light, but the there are always
>Catholic clergy and Quakers marching in the anti-war parades, marching
>for civil rights and worker's rights, against USA imperialism. The Left
>in America left conservative thinkers by the road side. Catholics,
>Quakers, Asian Americans. The Left is Bankrupt. In VL. Pynchon shows us
>how the Left spent its money.
>