IVIV (0) This Lively Yarn

[John Carvill]

Bravo!

Good work all round.

> 1) The novel ends on Pynchon's 33rd birthday - a nice way of underscoring
> the semi-autobiographical nature of IV.

Nice. Surely not a coincidence. May well point up the potential
significance of other dates?

> 2) The novel ends just four days after the Kent State Massacre (May 4, 1970).
> Many people have pointed to Charlie Manson as the guy who murdered the
> Sixties, but one could just as easily point to those National Guardsmen
> who opened fire on the students that day as the true culprits. At any rate,
> the Kent State Massacre was one more example of the paving over of the beach,
> and thus a fitting incident to end IV with (without explicitly saying so).

Indeed. Did the cause of the death of the Sixties come from within or
without? Fixating on Manson suggests an inherent 'vice' in the sense
of evil or sin or fault, whereas considering external factors (such as
NIxon and his hired killers) leads to considerations of 'vice' in the
sense of 'weakness' or frailty.