VLVL College of the Surf and PR3

[jbor]

>> Meanwhile, back at the text, Rex Snuvvle is described as follows:
>> 
>> while being indoctrinated into the government's version of
>> the war in Vietnam, [he] had, despite his own best efforts,
>> been at last as unable to avoid the truth as, once knowing
>> it, to speak it, out of what he easily admitted was fear of
>> reprisal.  (207)
>> 
>> The point Pynchon is making in _Vineland_ is that, by 1969, there was no
>> longer a "combined civil rights/anti-war movement". The students and
>> agitators were busy bickering amongst themselves, smoking dope and playing
>> dress-ups and, eventually, making bombs and breaking things, and
>> demonstrating and rioting just for the sake of it. The Civil Rights and
>> anti-War and free speech causes got lost along the way.
> 
> Why would P make this point? I don't think this is point at all.

Why not? I don't think he's reducing the whole '60s Student Movement, from
Berkeley to Columbia and beyond, to the farce which is College of the Surf.
Is that what you're arguing his point is?

It's a fictional college and a fictional revolt that follow the model of
many incidences of campus unrest all across the USA, from the 1960
Greensboro sit-in through to the confrontation at Jackson State in 1970.

Another example: Rex's back-story is reminiscent of WHORE (World Historians
Opposed to Racism and Exploitation), who co-sponsored the revolt at Kent
State in 1970.

Like the characterisation of Sphere in _V._, College of the Surf is a
composite creation rather than a *specific* parody of Columbia U. However,
Pynchon's selection of a particular point in time, and thus a particular
phase in the devolution of "the Movement", is quite deliberate.

best