VLVL What is Pynchon's attitude towards 24fps?

[jbor]

on 5/1/04 10:38 AM, Terrance wrote:

> Yeah, those who took part in the mass struggles of the 1960s and early
> 1970s will know that the birth of the struggle coincided not with the
> initial campaign for civil rights but with the demand for black
> liberation; that the leading influence was not Martin Luther King, Jr.,
> but Malcolm X.

'A Journey Into the Mind of Watts' (New York Times Magazine, 1966) and 'The
Secret Integration' (Saturday Evening Post, 1964) amply illustrate Pynchon's
stance on racial discrimination against African Americans, and the extent to
which he was willing to lend his weight, as both a writer of fiction and,
uniquely, as a front-line journalist, to the Civil Rights cause.

Notably also, _Vineland_ does illustrate how these student rebels of the
late '60s thoroughly neglected the Civil Rights cause (amongst others).
Recall Zoyd and Frenesi's wedding, for example, where the hippies of "the
Mellow Sixties" have immured themselves in a "sunlit sheep farm"
fantasy-land while "[w]ar in Vietnam, murder as an instrument of American
politics, black neighborhoods torched to ashes and death" are totally
forgotten (38-9). In the current chapter, the description of their quibbling
about discrimination against pigs and 'roaches (both animal and vegetable),
and the Pisks' announcement that "signism" is "worse than sexism", comprises
an appalling parody (197-8), whether it's self-conscious or not, serving to
make a joke of and effectively derail legitimate Civil Rights (and feminist)
protests of the preceding era, and it again demonstrates just how off-kilter
the social and political sensibilities of this bunch of nitwits are.

Note in particular that it's "Sledge, gesturing with his 'fro pick", who
puts a stop to the offensive travesty, and how Howie, "eyes ablush", manages
to rescue the situation with "a smoldering joint of gold Colombian as a
token of peace" (198.4-6). Seems these aren't just your token male
chauvinists in some feminist parable after all. Also, as with the WSC in
_V._, Pynchon doesn't label Sledge as an African-American man, thought it's
apparent from this exchange that that's precisely what he is. As I've noted
before, J.M. Coetzee's work owes something to Pynchon in this regard.

best