VLVL What is Pynchon's attitude towards the "traveling Movement co-ordinators?"

[jbor]

Toby:
> Since none of the "traveling movement co-ordinators"  are given character
> status, even as miniscule as Rex Snuvvle, I minimize their importance to
> the discussion of this chapter.

I see. In other words you're insisting that we should disregard that
paragraph? Scribble it out? An overt reference to "the Movement" and how it
operated?!

Speaking of Rex Snuvvle, would it be accurate to categorise his political
affiliation as "radical left"?

> Really their entire purpose was to set
> up the subsequent exploration into the character of Weed Atman.

Their "entire" purpose?! And, in fact, their summation of Weed as "neither
charismatic nor even personable" is contradicted later in the chapter; he
certainly exudes quite a bit of sexual charisma for the women, even 15 years
on (210.26-7).

> Has there ever been an orgainzation in any of his books that Pynchon
> approved of?  The counterforce was as disorganized as any organization
> can be, but that's the only one I can think of that he gives thumbs up
> to.

Pynchon doesn't give a thumbs-up to the Counterforce at all. It's an
absolutely ineffectual circus, a dumping ground or purgatory for traitors
and mercenaries. One cause which he does constantly endorse throughout his
fiction and non-fiction is the Civil Rights movement.

best

jbor:
>> But when traveling Movement co-ordinators began to show up,
>> they could only shake their heads and blink, as if trying to surface
>> from a dream. None of these kids had been doing any analysis. Not
>> only was nobody thinking about the real situation, nobody was even
>> brainlessly reacting to it. Instead they were busy surrounding with
>> a classically retrograde cult of personality a certain mathematics
>> professor, neither charismatic nor even personable, named Weed
>> Atman, who had ambled into celebrity. (205.6)
> 
> This is an extremely interesting paragraph, and it's interesting that it
> should be skipped over. Though reinforcing Pynchon's sarcastic description
> of the College of the Surf kids themselves -- "boys loosening their ties,
> even taking off their jackets, girls ... hitching their skirts up as far as
> their knees, a thousand students ... drinking milk, eating baloney- and-
> white-bread sandwiches, listening to Mike Curb Congregation records on the
> radio, talking about ... the new Nixon monument" -- the glimpse of these
> "traveling Movement co-ordinators" and their superciliousness, their
> commitment to "analysis" and "the real situation", and their disdain for the
> "classically retrograde cult of personality" which they identified as
> prevailing on the campus, is equally mocking, if not more so. The fact that
> these "traveling Movement co-ordinators" went around acting as agents
> provocateurs and, implicitly, stirring up trouble, puts them in much the
> same league as Brock Vond.
> 
> best
>