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

[Joseph Tracy]

>> Ray

>> What in Vineland, or elsewhere in Pynchon's works for that matter,  
>> suggests
>> that there is any form of rebellion that is NOT a dead end?
>>
> Dave
> This may be THE question to ask here.  I susepct that the answer is
> either troubling, or complicated, or both ...
>
Paul
I think it has to do with the function of art..
That  "a way out" has not yet been discovered is no reason to stop  
exploring possibilities.

. It is the age old question of  finding meaning, or of making it..  
This struggle is made more difficult for moderns by the emptiness of  
materialism and the hypocrisies of Abrahamic faiths. We live in a  
civilization based on war and plutocracy. Science shows us entropy,  
and, as Pynchon so powerfully shows,  entropy overpowers  our  
attempts to order  our lives, and reveals as base hucksterism  the   
agonistic  paradigms that give the cultures we live in  meaning. But  
he also takes sides with the Luddites, the lost, the anarchists, the  
workers ,the geomantic  and the tribes, those murdered by progress  
and colonization, and corporations,  and mindless conformity.  He  
does not show us how to win . No one knows how to win. But He takes  
sides.


I do not think Pynchon is so harsh in his treatment of rebellion.  
Certainly Nixonism/Reaganism/ Imperialism requires some kind of  
rebellion or resistance. The question I see Pynchon dig into is not  
whether to rebel but how to truly , deeply and effectively rebel.   
And I think he is using Western historic patterns as a series of Zen  
Koans  to say  not this, not this, not this...  When a character   
gets close and begins to open a  more powerful or  transcendent door  
he or she tends to disappear. ( Cyprian, Slothrop, Professor  
Vanderjuice, Kit on and off)   But along the way every realization of  
"not this"is a kind of rebellion against violence, nonsense, and the  
delusions of desire.  This is both very Christian( sermon on the  
mount style)  and very Buddhist.  You cannot both be heroic and know  
that what you are doing is heroic.   An artist can point us to beauty  
and to ugliness, a physician to health and to disease,  a scientist  
towards how things work  and how things don't work,  but rebelling  
against the ugly, diseased , and unworkable does not insure  beauty,  
health, and practical wisdom.  Killing a bad guy doesn't make you a  
good guy or even do very much about the balance of power.  But  the V  
force must be resisted,  must be stopped or changed and the success  
or failure of this effort  to counter the V is one test of every  
counter revolution, every proposition for perceiving or getting in  
tune with some  harmonic that tilts toward joy, compassion, altruism,  
peace,the kind of freedom that is free, or at least a serious  
lessening of abject misery and violence .

Returning to your original question. I see the development of the  
Chums of Chance as following a rebellion first against age-based  
status and authority and ultimately against any authority that is not  
a product of shared agreement.  They have also recognized their need  
for and included women as co-adventurers.   I see the Traverse Family  
rebelling against the plutocrats and their hired guns, starting out  
displaced, exploited, and on the run and ending up as a family  
connected to a network of resistance. They have gone down some false  
paths but they have come away enriched rather than impoverished.

  The 24fps collective is a good representation of the leadership of  
the youth wing of the 60s counterculture radicals. The problem is not  
with the rebellion against the excesses of the empire or the form of  
turning the cameras on the repression. The problem is that they are  
without experience, they fail to connect deeply and patiently to the  
success and methods  of the Civil Rights movement, or to the well of  
progressive sentiment in those  who rallied around FDR and the New  
Deal and to all those who knew there was further to go.  They end up  
out of their depth, seduced by anger, by the thrill of pushing their  
parents buttons, seduced by their own success at getting attention  
and unable to use the attention effectively.  They come up against  
very sophisticated systems of repression.  Some( Frenesi) turn back,  
turn on their own.

Round 1 goes to Vond

The other half of the story is about Zoyd and Prairie and the human/  
inward/family aspect of the counterculture movement.  The Father  
becomes the mother, the daughter discovers her history,  her  
weaknesses, the difference between the earth and a mall,  and somehow  
enough strength, enough integrity that when the sky God shopping mall  
master planner  drops from the heavens to save her from the  
wilderness, she keeps her wits and delivers a stinging insult.

Round 2 does not go to Vond

Ok Reagan is still in charge at this point. But  some of the children  
of the 60's revolution and many of its successes survive and continue  
to root themselves in our common ground. They couldn't all be brought  
back under control.

Anyway to interpret Pynchon's critiques of misplaced rebellion as an  
endorsement of conformity would, I think, be way off.