IV and cultural assimilation

[alice wellintown]

> Laura asks:
>
>> Isn't the melting pot alive and well?  If anything, it's more so than back in the '60s.

Not really. More people are coming to the US to live and work, but the
idea, the very old and very dated myth or idea (100 years old) of the
"Melting Pot" or re-inventing the Melting Pot is D E A D. I suspect
that this is not a very comfortable idea for most, but the world that
Pynchon looks back to, that Vineland the Good, that Green Breast in
Dutch Sailor's Eyes, that Garden of Leo Marx's Machine in the Garden
is Dead too. One of the reasons why some readers have called Pynchon
reactionary, nostalgiac, conservative even is that he keeps looking
back to that Gatsby Dream and the Green Light. It's clearer now than
ever that Henry Adams madde his mark on Pynchon's aesthetic and
phiosophical way of looking at America and it has only seepened as
he's aged and matured.