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

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 08:17, Otto wrote:
> ----- 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.

Many intellectual young people of Pynchon's cohort were ATTRACTED to
what was going on in the various Beat locales such as North Beach and
Greenwich Village just as they would have been to any exciting new
intellectual anti-establishment movement. And many may have been
influenced in their own future work by the writers and poets of the Beat
mentality. 

The thing we have to remember however is that these youth weren't and
couldn't have been truly of the Beat Generation. They hadn't lived long
enough. They hadn't had the experience as adults of the dislocations of
War or the wild optimism and high expectations of the post-war decade.
For it was this very return to normalcy and high expectations that
inevitably led to disillusion and alienation in those who intellectually
or constitutionally weren't able and didn't want to relate to what they
saw as society's expectations of them. It almost literally made them
tired, they were BEATen down by the whole prospect. They sought some
alternative, even if it was only the rejection of what the majority
considered normal. In many cases that was as far as they got. It wasn't
however from lack of trying.

In other words the Beat Movement wasn't anything like the later youth
movements, even though some youth--perhaps Pynchon--could find affinity
with and sympathy for it. I personally knew people of Pynchon's age who
could be described this way.