Woodstock in Inherent Vice

[János Székely]

SPOILERish

2009/8/16 Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>:
> Beyond literal allusions or playlist artists, which are lacking as has been pointed out, might we all (mostly)
> agree that Woodstock, the event, is thematically the 'Beach'
> in the epigraph and pervades in other words and concepts in IV?
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> Younger guy than a Boomer in Wash Post wrote that it was Mitchell's song and the movie that created the Myth of Woodstock. The reality was a muddy mess.
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>  I wrote him that No, it was the happy muddy mess, like pigs in mud, that created the truth of the myth. That from the beginning, front-page NYTimes
> story (and other papers, I guess) knew that a Major Event had happened. A major transvaluation of values in full display, to use a Nietzschean phrase.
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What struck me in fact was how little Woodstock was featured or
alluded to throughout the novel, apart from the first sentence,
compared to other events of that year. Note how little the Playlist
intersects with the Woodstock musical material. Note also his
documented attraction to anti-Woodstockian figures such as Zappa or
the Stones. I'm envious of anybody Who Was There but still, it's
rather the absence of the Woodstock motif that may matter.