VLVL College of the Surf and PR3

[jbor]

>>> 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".
> 
> But why does the narrator mention Berkeley and Columbia at all?

To differentiate the protests at Berkeley (1964) and Columbia (1968) from
this one (1969). To establish a fictionalised scenario in which the protests
at Berkeley and Columbia have already happened.

> It seems
> to me he's got his tongue in his cheek.

Hard to really say, and it's arguable that it's from Rex's perspective (208,
cf. the beginning and end of the paragraph) that the comparison is being
made anyway. But the mention of Berkeley and Columbia here seems a slender
basis on which to assert that your contempt for the '68 Columbia protests
("What did a bunch of Columbia kids know about Harlem or Vietnam anyway?")
has anything to do with Pynchon's text. The fact that the Columbia students
were focused on Civil Rights and the Vietnam War *distinguishes* them from
the College of the Surf students. The College of the Surf kids neither know
nor *care* about the Vietnam War or Civil Rights.

>> 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.
> 
> But the decline, according to Sale, did not begin after Columbia. The
> polarization, the in-fighting, the disillusionment, the gratuitous
> violence, the turning to drugs, as you can see from the excerpts I've
> provided from Sale's text, did not begin after the events at Columbia.

Sale indeed shows that the decline occurred progressively, I agree, but he
does not condemn the '68 Columbia protests, and nor does Pynchon.
 
>> 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.
> 
> Not doubt about it.
> 
> But when we look at what Sale's account of what happened at Columbia and
> we compare these with what happens in the episode that begins on page
> 204 of VL, it is obvious that Pynchon has fictionalized his source
> material. 

I disagree. The comparison Columbia -> College of the Surf just doesn't cut
it. The protests at Columbia in '68 spawned a resurgence of campus unrest
all across the USA. It seems clear to me that Pynchon's satire has been
deliberately set post-Columbia.

> Nothing new for TRP. He expects his readers, or at least some
> of them, to see that he has fictionalized another text.

No question about it. He has used Sale's text, and he is in agreement with
Sale's overall thesis imo.

best

> Malcolm X in GR.
> Graves in V. So on.