VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization

[Terrance]

> 
> > And Pynchon and the
> > post-Beats were thrilled. They felt a sense of liberation as artists and
> > men. They had a way to be cool. But as a post-Beat years later, he came
> > to see much deeper, with a mature and political mind (not an unpolitical
> > kid's mind), that the Beats politics (not simply the clothes, the music,
> > the talk, the non-conformity) were quite sane, were in fact, a decent
> > affirmation of American values. To affirm american values one needs to
> > be conservative. Conservative in what sense?
> 
> This is the part that doesn't seem justified by what's actually written in
> the Intro. He eventually came "to see deeper" into the Beat sensibility;
> that doesn't mean that he saw that it was really endorsing conservative '50s
> values. 

But I'm not talking about conservative '50s values at all. 


It means that he saw beyond the props and postures to the values
> underneath: he recognised that it was a rebellion against the strait-laced
> conservatism and the oppressive political and social arrangements of the
> McCarthy/Eisenhower years. Previously he had been an "unpolitical '50s
> student"; he became politicised by virtue of his *literary* acquaintance
> with the Beat writers.

Agreed. 


> 
> I think the stumbling block here is the question of who "we" are, and of
> what it is that "we all want to believe about American values". I think he's
> talking about the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.


I posted the Port Huron Statement. I think that he's talking about what
they were talking about then. 

The stumbling block was one word: conservative.  But thanks for getting
around it. A pragmatist, I'll gladly use any of the terms Dave Monroe
mixes and scratches out. But I see fascism is back so I'm gonna take my
two turntables and a microphone and practice the sound of waves. 

Cheers, 

T 

http://www.haddonfield.k12.nj.us/hmhs/academics/english/sound_of_waves/default.htm