P & the Beats, hippies, WWII

[pynchonoid]

Otto:
[...] Especially lacking that WW-2 experience as a
grown-up is the big difference
between P. and Kerouac. There are ten years between
them. [...]


P's experience of WWII as a child on the home front --
and the disconnect between what he thought of the War
as a child (how the War was presented in the media,
and by the people in P's life) and what he discovers
about the War as he grows older, play a big role in
the development of his artistic sensibility and what
he writes, imo. Like the Beats, he's disillusioned as
he explores that disconnect; like the hippies (whose
acid and other drugs P appears to have shared), P gets
a glimpse of enlightenment and liberation that fades
as the substances metabolize; as part of the larger
"counter-culture" movement, sees Beat and hippie
values first marginalized then co-opted in the
marketplace; but despite a rather bohemian existence
in the late '50s and '60s he is neither Beat nor
hippie. 

Pynchon's not a Baby Boomer, either, of course, nor is
he a union worker, not a neocon  -- he doesn't fit
into any of the neat categories or
carefully-constructed boxes that some folks here like
to build to contain him and his works. (As if any
human could ever be forced into such a box!)



	
		
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