Woodstock - SPOILER ALERT

[Bekah]

And the earlier periods are there, too.   Del Shannon's Runaway (an  
old fave of mine and Doc likes it) is mentioned and it was released  
and a huge hit in 1961.   I think it's called an "oldie" on a radio  
station in IV.

Bekah
http://web.mac.com/bekker2/

On Aug 17, 2009, at 3:30 AM, Stephen Musgrave wrote:

> On a second reading of IV one clear theme emerging for me is the  
> story being of and yet not of the time in which it is notionally  
> set, and I think TRP drops various clues throughout to this effect.  
> Though the only tangible one I have for now is the inclusion in a  
> list of bands of one(s) from later periods, the Corvairs I think.
>
> Plus there are the nods to ipods and the web - the observation of  
> kids on record-listening booths and the ARPAnet. All very funny and  
> surely also intended to get the reader to at least consider that  
> maybe all is not as it appears to Doc. I think this also links to  
> the issue of how stoned he is/isn't throughout, and hence the extent  
> to which he is/not an unreliable narrator. In a quite hilarious way.  
> "So then class, can we trust the narrator?" "I dunno teacher, but  
> I'd like a hit of whatever he's got" etc.
>
> TRP is mocking a lot of things in this novel...
>
> > From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
> > To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Subject: Re: Woodstock
> > Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:50:48 -0700
> >
> > On Aug 16, 2009, at 2:06 PM, Carvill John wrote:
> >
> > > Bekah sez:"IV is not particularly nostalgic . . .
> >
> > I'd say it isn't nostalgic at all. Mournful's more like it.
> >
> > > . . . if you weren't there because the names and places are not  
> the
> > > ones which have continued on in our collective media-induced
> > > memory (Manson excepted)."
> >
> > . . . and Charles Manson is absolutely central to the book's  
> notion of
> > "Inherent Vice."
> >
> > > A very interesting point. IV isn't as saturated with canonical
> > > Sixties references as we might expect. Is this just because  
> Pynchon
> > > wanted to avoid obviousness and cliches? Or is something more
> > > complex going on?
> >
> > One thing that's clearly going on is that this is Los Angeles,  
> spring
> > 1970. I guess that wouldn't be apparent to someone who wasn't  
> there at
> > the time. 1969/1970 was a one-week visit to see my Mom in hippie  
> situ,
> > and plenty of other shorter trips, mostly to South Central on either
> > side of that great new-year's divide. Otherwise I spent most of my
> > time a four-hour car drive away via old highway 99, in Fresno.  
> Spent 4
> > extraordinarily weird months in Eagle Rock in 1972, later moved in  
> for
> > a longer spell 1974-1979, living in various low-rent spots between
> > Eagle Rock and Altadena.
> >
> > Much of the texture & vibe of Inherent Vice is that of Los Angeles
> > just after it found out that Love, is it turned out, was not all you
> > need and in fact wasn't even all that durable.
> >
> > > One of the things that sort of occurred to me as I read through IV
> > > first time, was 'how many details would you have to change for  
> this
> > > book to have been set in, say, the early 1990s?',
> >
> > Everything—this thing is trapped in time like a fly in amber.
> >
> > > I guess this initially triggered by all the Lebowski associations
> > > we'd been fed before we got to read the book. I ended up thinking
> > > that IV seems both utterly bound up with its temporal setting, and
> > > simultaneously somehow not really 'of its time' at all.
> >
> > Like it's also stuck [Like Eliott Gould in "The Long Goodbye"] in  
> the
> > mise-en-scène and time-zone of Raymond Chandler, only difference is
> > that everybody's a wise guy these days so Marlowe's forties lines
> > don't have the "zing" they used to now that we're all in this stoned
> > and cynical seventies world.
> >
> > > If it sounds like I'm hedging my bets that's because I'm still
> > > puzzling over it. Now and then, I got to thinking that it seemed
> > > less 'Sixties' in feel than the 1960s segments of Vineland.
> >
> > That's because Inherent Vice is set in the Seventies, only all these
> > stoners haven't got the memo yet. The Sixties in Vineland were the
> > Sixties. What a difference 4 months, a year, a decade makes. eh?
> >
> > > Part of me recoils from this line of thought, but still it
> > > persists.This sense of duality - that the book is (obviously) very
> > > Sixties, yet!
> > > also somehow not very Sixties at all . . .
> >
> > You mean like how Gravity's Rainbow feels like Los Angeles' long  
> shadow
> > —via the movies—falling over the world [something timeless] during  
> the
> > forties while folks in the novel also feel a lot like denizens of  
> the
> > L.A. of the seventies at the same time?
> >
> > Geli Tripping? Meet Sortilège.
> >
> > > . . . ties in, for me anyhow, with the question of just how stoned
> > > Doc really is throughout the narrative.
> >
> > And whether that "stone time" is different from other times, a  
> subject
> > that also comes up during Doc's [and everyone else's] acid trips.  
> And
> > it ties in, for me anyhow, with the question of "just how stoned was
> > Thomas Pynchon when he was writing Gravity's Rainbow?"
> >
> > > Which both contribute to the sense that IV is nowhere near as  
> simple
> > > as it seems on the surface.
> >
> > Namaste.
> >
> > > CheersJ
> >
>
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