Re: VL-IV (15): Ché For Children, pages 325/327

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robin Landseadel" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 1:08 PM
Subject: Re: VL-IV (15): Ché For Children, pages 325/327


> On Apr 8, 2009, at 9:53 AM, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
>> . . . Pynchon wisely chose to explore, and quite ingeniously, how  youth 
>> was fatally complicit, for reasons they could neither  understand nor 
>> control,  in sustaining the Power they wanted to  rebel against.  Pynchon 
>> was able to make Drugs as means to youth  power a positive, at least at a 
>> jocular level,  but at the same time  quite a negaive as well.
>
> I'm not so sure here about your comment concerning the shadow side of 
> drugs in Vineland. Pynchon seems to separate marijuana and  psychedelics 
> away  from Coke and Speed, Alcohol and all the rest of  the ways of 
> getting rilly, rilly wasted.

Yes, I think that distinction is important. I mainly meant the thinkng 
they're going to live forever part (or was it never dying) That delusionary 
possible effect of drugs is easily interpreted  as on the one hand promoting 
great optimism and opportunity for progress, but on the other as resulting 
in foolhearty recklessness and overconfidence.

But I guess there is also the Lomboso observation that normal people tend to 
resist change. Maybe it takes people under strange delusions to carry out 
revolutiions.

Although not mentioned by Pynchon what Lombrose refered to as political 
criminals (anarchists and the like) were observed to be less resistant to 
new  possibilities than normal people  In regular criminals (people 
unconcerned about the rights of others and without morals) this flexibility 
toward the new was not seen.

It seems like Vond, a Lombroso enthusiast, was was thinking was that the 
Pynchon youth were too normal. Those that were not regular criminals, that 
is

P

>
> On the other hand, that fatal complicity that you speak of is directly  on 
> point. So much of that complicity is unwitting—Pynchon points to  the 
> creation of the consumer species, a new electronic species created  via 
> the Tube, the creation of a zombie nation.