VL--IV Passivity, more active thoughts

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>>  turned by Brock Vond,
> > do all those things kill the possibility of sympathy for her, of
> > something to learn from her, of partial validity and/or
> > understandability in her choices?
>
> __________________________________________________
>
>  I think, via the nature of Pynchon's fiction, that we are to read Z & F as
>  his take on hippieness, on hippieness in American society not as an ideal.
>  At least, on a strain of hippiedom from the 60s, the strain that "failed"?
>
>  As I reread, I am more impressed with how LIKEABLE TRP makes them.....
>  they are very likeable, just like meeting "flower children", such uncharacter-armored people...so nice, they have such fine qualities.
>
>  Yet, deeper reading shows what he ALSO thinks about them. (And many critics say he cannot create complex characters...or did not until M & D)
>
>  No, I think we can have sympathy for Frenesi and one way TRP handles it is to have her betrayal come out of this 'open' character
>  quality.....
>

yes, they're a mixed bag, portrayed with a grace like Lew Basnight's -
seeing them just as they are - and if I ask that they even be admired,
it's not without admitting some admiration for Brock Vond too (as we
used to say "that's his trip"), and quite a bit more for Hector in
addition...

also, the cross-section of the main characters plus the other
populants (?) of their world, as James Joyce wrote, "the component
partners of our societate" - who's better than them, in the book?
Who's better than them, in the world I know?  really not many spring
to mind

Finally, the picture later on of the young Sasha and Hub, similar
hipsters surfing against the trend but still managing to have some
Kodak moments - plays on our desire as in V., to "see young people
getting together" and (what's the word? it's from heraldry? not
emblematizes? something...need to sleep on it...)

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"All the 3s are brown, and the 5s are gray" - Paint by Numbers song