Another way to categorize TRPs oeuvre

[Rob Jackson]

It's the name by which they refer to themselves, revealing a self- 
consciousness, even a sort of smugness, about their affectations of  
'hipness' and decadence - a bit like 'Lardass' Levine from 'The Small  
Rain' (1959), and 'Meatball' Mulligan and even Callisto, with his self- 
indulgently melancholic 'grippe espagnole', in 'Entropy' (1960).

So, yes, satire; but TP himself also admits to wearing those horn-rims  
at one time (SL 'Intro', 1984, p. 8).

The only unself-consciously non-PC character (and all the more lovable  
for it), who transgresses even the rules of literary chronology  
through the texts, is good ole 'Pig' Bodine.

all the best


> Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2008 16:34:03 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut@[omitted]>
>
> Whatever counter-culture flirting TRP was doing, he did call those  
> characters The Whole Sick Crew.
>
> First time I read V., decades ago, when I was as young as the  
> characters,
> I stopped at the chapter where Pig acts worse than a "pig." I  
> thought I was supposed to identify with them hip guys. And didn't.
>
> Years later, I came back and got it closer to right, I think.
>
> Satirizing in TRP runs even deeper than paranoia, imho.