VLVL the Movement WAS Re: Pynchon mention re rock, paper, scissors game

[pynchonoid]

Nothing in Bandwraith's post to disagree with.
_Vineland_ is clearly conscious of the Movement as it
expressed itself at Berkeley and Columbia, and that's
enough, contrasted with the PR3 fiasco, to establish
the novel's basic story:  a corrupt government (from
First Criminal Nixon at the top to so-called "rogue"
elements like Brock Vond bottom feeding) plus the Tube
(like the government, captive to the desires of big
business) equals 1984 under Reagan-Bush.

Vato and Blood have received relatively little
attention here -- and most of what has been said is
diffult to understand because of the rage that seems
to have informed it -- but I suggest that with them
Pynchon also points, briefly but powerfully, to
another very important Movement element:  the vast
reservoir of anti-War sentiment among GIs in Vietnam
(and more generally throughout the US Army during the
Vietnam War era, and solidarity with their fellow
people of color on the part of African-American
soldiers who served in Vietnam. 

--- Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
[...]I agree (have agreed, continue to...) and again,
> point to
> the almost total lack of the portrayal of the
> combined
> civil rights/anti-war movement (that coalesced
> around MLK, Jr.)
> in this novel, as another example of P. using the
> "presence
> of absence" technique, as he did in GR, to a large
> extent, with
> the Holocaust (I know you don't precisely accept
> that, but we
> are working on the same side...) to draw even more
> attention
> to the real battle, and more importantly, to the
> real enemy, as
> opposed to their tele-envisioned versions. [...]

> [...] While not exactly "Magical Realism" there are
> parallels. 

Victoria Nelson's _The Secret Life of Puppets_ is a
good starting point, imo, for understanding Pynchon's
expression of the "fantastic." (Thanks again to Dave
Monroe for that suggestion. And, I've read the first
chapter of another book suggested by Mr. Monroe: David
M. Lubin's _Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of
Images_, which promises to add much to a reading of
Pynchon -- check it out, too.)

The rest of Bandwraith's post is right on, too. 

P.S.  I'm sorry to hear MalignD was immune to -- or
perhaps just ignorant of -- the Rev. Dr. MLK Jr.'s
anti-War message.  I was lucky, I guess, to attend a
high school where people paid attention to what he and
other Movement folk were saying, we published an
underground newspaper ('68 - '70), etc. (While
mainstream, Establishment figures may have ignored
King when he went anti-War, the Movement didn't.) Yes,
many of us got sucked in by the Tube over the years,
but more than a few of us have found ourselves in the
ranks of demonstrators (and voters) against the wars
in the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq, although it's
probably more appropriate to adopt Pynchon's term and
see those as part of the War that Never Ends. 



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