VLVL Is it OK to be a misoneist?

[jbor]

on 7/3/04 4:19 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:

>> 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?
>
> Because he's Pynchon.

It wasn't a "why" question, not that this is an explanation. It asked "how".

> And the kids don't know it's failed. They are
> still undergraduates.

I don't understand whether you're talking about "kids" today or the "kids"
in the novel. The characters in the novel aren't undergraduates at all, and,
by the time of PR3's collapse, they have all had a pretty clear
demonstration of how the "Youth Movement" has failed.

> I thought "egg it on and enjoy the spectacle" was
> quite aptly put. It's taking Pynchon's widely acknowledged love of the
> underdog and then giving the screw another half turn. Look, if you're a
> novelist you traffic in these kinds of irresponsible behaviors.

I don't agree that all novelists are motivated in the same way, and I don't
agree that Pynchon's fiction is just fun and nonsense in the interest of
perversity. You're certainly entitled to hold and express that opinion, just
as anyone else is entitled to disagree with you. It's not a complaint.

>> 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.
> 
> I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Only that some things are given a place of prominence in the novel where
others aren't. I'm interested in discussing what's in the novel, regardless
of whether Pynchon is right or wrong to have chosen to focus on some things,
such as the collapse of the "Youth Movement", while overlooking others, such
as Humphrey and the protests at the '68 Chicago Democratic Convention (or
the Port Huron Statement for that matter). It's his take on the period that
is interesting; he experienced it first hand as well. I don't see how Hubert
Humphrey or the Manson family are relevant to the discussion, unless they're
being cited as things he shouldn't have left out of the novel?

best