re Re: VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchonoid" <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
To: "Pynchon-L" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 6:45 PM
Subject: re Re: VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization


> Otto:
> [...] Pynchon was too young for the Beats and too old
> for the Hippies. [...]
>
> I don't think it's his age that's the issue.  As a
> young man in the late 50s he's right in the Beat
> Generation sweet spot, isn't he? And he seems to have
> been part of the beatnik scene -- hanging out in
> Greenwich Village, listening to jazz, associating with
> folk musicians, & etc.
>

But he became no Beat writer. Luckily, I'd say 'cause none of them has
reached his depth, from a lit-crit point of view of course. Not that it's
important, literary finesse is not what Kerouac is important for.

> Otto:
> [...]  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. [...]
>
> He's not one of the "Beat Generation" celebrity artist
> insiders, imo that (plus his artist's perspective)is
> what makes him "marginal" -- as he says in the SL
> Intro, he's responding to the beatnik writers -- even
> as he's living a beatnik life, working on his stories
> and novels, having traveled some distance from his
> relatively affluent suburban childhood, and having
> departed radically from the Brooks Brothers future
> that might have seemed normal for someone coming up in
> that time and place.
>
> He wasn't too old for the hippie scene of the 60s,
> either -- plenty of 30-somethings among that decade's
> phase of the ongoing counter-culture movement.
>

Again, but he didn't become one. When I recall it correctly it's been
Crissie (in the Dubini-Bros movie) who speaks about his intentions to attend
the 1968-Chikago demonstrations ("Tschechago") but we don't have a
verification that he's been there.

Otto