VLVL College of the Surf

[jbor]

Terrance:

> Pynchon's College of the Surf is Columbia University and Berkeley. See
> Sale's SDS. 
> But it's not Columbia or Berkeley. No, not at all. What is Pynchon up to
> now? 

No, it's not Columbia or Berkeley. The protest is "not much by Columbia and
Berkeley standards" (208.22), the curriculum and enrolment intake at the
College is tailored to meet the specific vocational requirements of the
local aristocracy (204 -- it's set up as a "private polytechnic", not a
public university), and the students are indeed "docile" and conservative
(205), until the fateful intrusion of potent marijuana from someone's
brother who was in Vietnam which really does blow some of their minds and
which provokes some of the students to ring the cops (206). The "traveling
Movement co-ordinators" and 24fps hear on the grapevine about the police on
campus and arrive to try and stir up trouble.

The students and protests at Columbia and Berkeley were not like this at
all, and are not satirised in _Vineland_.

best