Boomer myopia

[Otto]

You think the fourth part of GR should be renamed?

Artificially leaving out the sixties context when reading Lot 49, GR
and especially Vineland would appear parochial and myopic to me.

Otto

2006/11/20, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net>:
>
>
>
> I've probably read more reviews (new and old) of Pynchon books in the last
> month or two than in all the decades before, and one recurring pattern has
> jumped out at me: an identification of P's anti-authoritarian streak with
> that big cloudy pop-historical-cultural construct labeled "the 1960s." The
> canonical form for AtD is something like "Approaching 70, Pynchon has lost
> none of his 1960s countercultural misgivings about power and those who wield
> it…" -- followed by the reviewer's personal take on whether that is (a)
> still inspiring and unsettling, or (b) dated and tiresome.
>
> I find this parochial, myopic, and increasingly annoying -- not just as
> review fodder, but as it creeps into more ambitious readings. Thereare two
> straightforward conclusions to be drawn about a writer who gives us the
> Egyptians and Florentines in V, Jesus Arrabal and the Trystero/T&T history
> in CoL49, the Argentines and Kirghiz and witches in GR, the alternate
> Americas and Enlightenments that might have been in M&D, and the
> [meta-spoiler alert] an****ists in AtD:
>
> (1) P's concerns with power and freedom stretch over centuries and
> continents, and address civilization and its discontents in the broadest
> sense
>
> (2) To the extent that his personal history is relevant, they were already
> evident in the short stories, and well developed as V. took shape in the
> late 1950s.
>
> I have a half-developed notion that the *least* interesting and successful
> aspects of Vineland are part and parcel of its focus on the 1960s and their
> aftermath. I believe that the mental  grooves (ruts) worn by a generation of
> Boomer navel-gazing (weren't we wild and crazy? Weren't we about to change
> the world? Where did it all go wrong?) were already so deep by 1990 that P.
> had trouble climbing out of them enough to impose his own vision. And
> they've only gotten deeper since then.
>
> So… as you've all been kind enough to designate me Supreme Autocrat, I
> declare an indefinite ban on interpretive and evaluative statements linking
> Pynchon and the 1960s. By and large, when offered by those currently aged 40
> to 60, they yield less of interest about the writing than about "how old I
> was when I discovered Pynchon". When offered by those of any age, they yield
> less about the writing than about "how I cram Pynchon into the most clichéd,
> give-it-a-$@#^&-rest cultural-historical discourse of the last two
> generations."
>
>
> Monte "not talkin' 'bout my generation" Davis
> monte.davis at verizon.net
>