VL-IV (14): Mass Migration of Freaks, pages 305, 314/315

[Henry Musikar]

Freaks?  Hungry Freaks, Daddy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HARftxbkX2M 

http://preview.tinyurl.com/mother-zappa 

Henry Mu
KCUF, 128 Kb/s on Shoutcast Unlimited:
http://tinyurl.com/kcuf-on-shoutcast-limited/ to play,
http://www.urdomain.us/playing.html to see what's playing, and now available
on RECIVA Internet-Radio receivers, http://tinyurl.com/kcuf-on-reciva 

KCUF can now be listened to using a Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget:
http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?bt=1&q=KCUF 

-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Landseadel
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 12:19 PM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: VL-IV (14): Mass Migration of Freaks, pages 305, 314/315

	Back in nineteen-sixty-three,
	We walked a fine line.
	We were takin' to the streets,
	Skatin' on a thin dime.
	We were searchin' after truth and beauty,
	Now they turn it into late-night movies.
	How can I explain,
	That it's not the same?
	Janis Ian: Guess You Had to be There

http://www.mp3lyrics.org/j/janis-ian/guess-you-had-to/ 

			. . . . Somewhere I had come up with the notion
	that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction, when the
	truth, as everyone knows, is nearly the direct opposite.
	Slow Learner, page 21

As far as I can tell, the Hippie diaspora has been going on as long as  
hippies. While it's true that an eleven-year can only pay so much  
attention- being easily distracted by highly sugared, brightly colored  
breakfast cereals so in vogue in 1966- I was paying attention to what  
was going on. Metallic Orange was big that year, as I recall. It  
seemed like brand new dyes were sprouting up everywhere, almost all  
proving to be quite easily faded by too much light. I spent my summer  
in Watts, the same Watts reported on by Pynchon 43 years ago:

	Restructuring of the riot goes on in other ways. All Easter week
	this year, in the spirit of the season, there was a "Renaissance
	of the Arts," a kind of festival in memory of Simon Rodia, held at
	Markham Junior High, in the heart of Watts.
	Along with theatrical and symphonic events, the festival also
	featured a roomful of sculptures fashioned entirely from found
	objects--found, symbolically enough, and in the Simon Rodia
	tradition, among the wreckage the rioting had left. Exploiting
	textures of charred wood, twisted metal, fused glass, many of
	the works were fine, honest rebirths.

	In one corner was this old, busted, hollow TV set with a rabbit-
	ears antenna on top. Inside, where its picture tube should have
	been, gaping out with scorched wiring threaded like electronic
  	ivy among its crevices and sockets, was a human skull. The 	
	name of the piece was "The Late, Late, Late Show."

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/watts.html 

Part of what Pynchon saw, at this particular and elusive moment of  
time, was white flight from urban centers, the hippie diaspora  
emerging just as the hippie movement was  being born. Then again, "On  
The Road" was Old Testament to the "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"'s New  
Testament.

Perhaps someone else can iron out the timeline finer, but the scene  
appears to be set in 1969 or so in this passage:

	 . . .You know, there'd be worse places for you and the ol' 	
	bundle to live, have a Home, beautiful country, only a short spin
	up or down 101 from everything, from the Two Street honky-
	tonks to the eateries of Arcata to the surfing at Shelter Cove,
	and you'd have a social life, 'cause lately this mass migration of
	freaks you spoke of, nothing personal, from L.A. north is spilling
	over into Vineland, so you'd have free baby-sitting too, dope
	connections, an inexhaustible guitar-player pool?"
	Vineland, page 305

And everything in that passage is still pretty much true, that pretty  
much defines the epicenter-the Capitol-of Freaksville [  f# minor  
organ stab ! ! ! ], the Green Triangle, that place that hippies go to  
when they "get away from the city." Vineland is yet another one of  
them Tristero-like collectives that fungly spawn and spoor and  
reproduce all through Pynchonland [a high-tech playground akin to  
Disneyland with way more Nazi junk than you really want to look at].  
[Whatever you do, don't take the I.G. Farben ride.]

<snip>