Zoyd

[kelber at mindspring.com]

No matter what we attribute the "failure" of the sixties to, the fact is, there was something -- a spirit, an ideology, an idealism - to fail.  Successive generations have brought us the Me Decade, nihilistic punk rock, sexist and materialistic rap music, rampant get-ahead yuppie-ism, the dot-com "revolution, and, at best, a fleeting (apparently disintegrated now) Obama-worship movement.  Why are we so harsh towards those in the sixties who at least thought about what an ideal society might look like?  They failed?  Well, who's succeeded?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
" >Sent: Aug 23, 2009 9:07 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: Zoyd
>
>The sixties, any era, has more than one "what happened" about it. It's 
>as rich as life 'cause it was. 
>
>Orwell brilliantly stated this in one of his review essays, scoring a work of recent history for just this kind of monopolistic generalizing. 
>
>I still wonder if that inisght of Orwell's is partly contained in P's bi-location metaphor from AtD...
>
>--- On Sat, 8/22/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: Zoyd
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Date: Saturday, August 22, 2009, 8:58 PM
>> We can't get off the 60s and discuss
>> VL and IV.
>> 
>> VL opens in 1984, but a good portion of the text is either
>> flashback
>> to the 60s,  a discussion of or argument about, what
>> happened in the
>> 60s. Of course the characters don't agree about what
>> transpired in the
>> 60s, so we get several competing narratives; one of the
>> reasons why it
>> is difficult for the reader to come to any definite
>> reading.  And, as
>> our discussion here of Sales' text on SDS proves, outside
>> sources may
>> only complicate readings and discussions. Nothing wrong
>> with that as
>> far I'm concerned.
>> 
>
>
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