VLVL College of the Surf and PR3

[jbor]

on 20/1/04 1:37 AM, Terrance wrote:

> The episode at the College of the Surf is set in 1969, but the episodes
> at Berkeley are sometime earlier, 67-68.

I agree, but where the narrator notes that the College of the Surf revolt
was "not much by Berkeley or Columbia standards" (220) it's a reference to
the protests at Berkeley in 1964 and the protests at Columbia in 1968.
That's one big reason why I don't think the College of the Surf revolt is
meant as "a fictionalized parody of Berkeley-Columbia".

Sale's book also traces the decline of SDS in 1969-70 -- the in-fighting and
factions (cf. the "traveling Movement co-ordinators", Rex, Weed, BAAD),
gratuitous violence (cf. 253.33, the Pisks), disillusionment. I think that's
the period Pynchon is fictionalising in _Vineland_, i.e. the way things went
*after* Columbia '68, leading up to the Manhattan explosion on March 6 1970,
and to the bloodshed at Kent State and Jackson State after that.

Pynchon shows how "the Movement" -- symbolised in PR3 -- imploded as a
result of *internal* flaws and squabbling and myopia. The novel shows how
these things are chronic and terminal even before Brock's interference,
which, I agree, does help to speed the process along.

best