VLVL Is it OK to be a misoneist?

[jbor]

      Brock Vond's genius was to have seen in the activities of the
    sixties left not threats to order but unacknowledged desires for
    it. While the Tube was proclaiming youth revolution against parents
    of all kinds and most viewers were accepting this story, Brock saw
    the deep -- if he'd allowed himself to feel it, the sometimes
    touching -- need only to stay children forever, safe inside some
    extended national Family. The hunch he was betting on was that these
    kid rebels, being halfway there already, would be easy to turn and
    cheap to develop. They'd only been listening to the wrong music,
    breathing the wrong smoke, admiring the wrong personalities. They
    needed some reconditioning. (269)

on 6/3/04 8:03 PM, jbor wrote:

> (And I believe that Paul did refer to this passage ...

See below. (Sometimes it seems as if all the flamebait and accusatory
blather are designed to further divert attention from passages such as this
one, to try to pretend it's not really there -- it's a crucial passage, and
it has been avoided like the plague. There's no malice involved in pointing
this out, as Toby also had with the "misoneism" passage.)

Anyway, back to the text. Though the fact that the '60s "Youth Movement"
*was* a failed revolution is still being disputed -- bizarre as that may
seem -- I don't agree that what Pynchon is up to in his depiction of its
collapse in _Vineland_ is merely to egg it on and enjoy the spectacle (How
does one "egg on" a revolution which has already failed? And, why would you
bother?) It's not that he's appointing blame for its failure; he is
identifying the various and inter-connected reasons for its failure and
depicting these with a satirical and critical eye, however. His writing, as
always, is forward-looking, much more in the spirit of facing up to our
mistakes and learning from them than revelling in cheap nihilism or
wallowing in cheap nostalgia (à la Proust, say).

Whether or not the American Left, or the '60s "Youth Movement", are as
irrelevant as you say in your most recent post, is a side issue -- I'd argue
that they are much more important than you've allowed, and was reminded of
this by a reprint of a Doonesbury cartoon strip from 1971 in yesterday's
paper depicting John Kerry -- but in terms of the Pynchon novel we're
discussing the collapse of the "Youth Movement" is the main focus and it's
being presented as a quite important cog in the advent and trajectory (71-2)
of the "Nixonian Reaction", and the Reagan years of the '80s. In fact, it's
the political debates, and Humphrey and the '68 Chicago Demos in particular,
which are *not* depicted or even mentioned in Pynchon's text, and thus which
are being seen -- rightly or wrongly -- as irrelevant to the lives of these
characters. 

best 


>> Subject: Re: VLVL the collapse of the Youth Movement
>> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@[omitted]>
>> To: pynchon-l@[omitted]
>> Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 16:55:26 -0500
> 
> [...] 
>> Surely, "attracted to men in uniform" is a metonymy for "the revolution
>> will fail."
>> 
>> If Proust hadn't already said something so similar sounding, Pynchon
>> might have said "the only revolutions are failed revolutions."
>> 
>> 19 and 20th C revolutions, we're talking about. 18 C revolutions had a
>> completely different dynamic.
>> 
>> Pynchon not only has sympathy for failed revolutions he eggs them on and
>> enjoys the spectacle.
>> 
>> The phrase "failed revolution" is very problematic for the simple reason
>> that if one should actually succeed (miracle of miracles) its very
>> success would mark its failure. The faction gaining power would
>> immediately set about to turn itself into the preceding regime.
>> 
>> What was it Brock said?
>> 
>> Brock's genius was to have seen in the activities of the sixties left
>> not a threat to order but unacknowledged  desire for it.
>> 
>> Trying to assign "blame" for the failed youth revolution isn't a
>> productive activity. Frenesi didn't do it. Brock didn't do it.
>> 
>> Frenesi is a bad girl. Or at least she is no better than she should be
>> (as the saying goes). Perhaps she should be in jail.
>> 
>> Pynchon doesn't need to critique revolutions. It would be fiddling work
>> for a genius writer. Nothing to critique.
>> 
>> I keep repeating myself.