Zoyd

[Mark Kohut]

P writes with ambition, agreed?. What major writer would we "reduce"--and we know P's perspective on such reduction---to such a narrow "meaning"? 
Like talking of one of Shakespeare's history plays as if it were about a few years in so-and-so's reign just because those years in so-and-so's reign occasioned Shakepeare's take. 

What do we KNOW about P and 'the sixties revolution'? What does he think THAT was? What si the meaning of 'revolution'? 

Vineland's presentation of how the "sixties revolution" failed does narrow the novel when described that way, even if the general take on the humanly-mixed characters is right on. There is also more. Especially more on Frenesi. And the political/social structure of America.  Vineland, like L49 is about America......how it "unfurled" since, say, L49. 
The Nixon Repression, Reagan from California through the presidency were 
America's elected leaders........
They---we who elected them---as Tore sez, who finds everything that is important in GR, are also part of that book. 
All together. It is America. 


--- On Sun, 8/23/09, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Zoyd
> To: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Sunday, August 23, 2009, 5:35 AM
> One of the key differences between
> Pynchon's perspective on the
> Sixties, and those on this list who seek to 'explain' to us
> that
> Pynchon's 'purpose' is to expose the fact that the
> revolutions of the
> Sixties contained teh seeds of their own destruction, is
> that Pynchon
> regrets that destruction, that failure. He is, imho, asking
> questions
> about what happened, rather than issuing edicts. Those who
> pontificate
> and endlessly seek to contain the 'blame' for what happened
> to the
> Sixties movements to factors internal to those movements,
> are working
> to an agenda which is in diametric opposition to the spirit
> in which
> Pynchon approaches the matter. Therefore the irony could
> not be more
> striking: those who are engaged in trying to 'explain' what
> Pyncho is
> saying in VL will never really understand it at all,
> because you have
> to love something in 'the Sixties' in order to accurately
> see the
> flaws. Same goes for friendship: Zoyd knows Van Meter's
> flaws because
> he is his friend. The same reason he sticks by him is the
> reason he
> knows there's some question over whether he should.
> 
> Those of us who see good *and* bad in 'The Sixties' can
> smell
> revisionist right-wingers coming. We know your agenda for
> what it is.
>