IVIV parody?

[rich]

On 10/23/09, Doug Millison <dougmillison at comcast.net> wrote:
> Rich, I'm not disappointed by IV for a number of reasons (one of them
> being the way I read Pynchon's novels as chapters in a single big
> work, so I won't be disappointed if one bit is weaker, perhaps, than
> the rest, in my mind I'm still wandering around in the latest update
> of an ongoing oeuvre that continues to satisfy), but what I find
> perhaps most striking is what a bleak picture of "the '60s" IV presents.
> Pynchon like the rest of us has had a chance to watch all these
> anniversary celebrations of that generation, Free Speech Movement,
> Woodstock, Sgt. Pepper's, Manson, etc., all the famous milestones, and
> they all either tend to glorify/sentimentalize or demonize the decade.
>
> Pynchon refrains from doing either in IV, and it's not a pretty picture.
______________
I really think if we are speaking in these terms the legacy of the
60s, I would,not to repeat myself but again I would,  nominate Robert
Stone's Dog Soldiers. its gritty, its tragic, its got moral weight,
its a good street novel, and its humorous in places (albeit a very
black blend that)
as David Morris noted, there's nothing really tragic going on, no
one's in any real danger in IV; Dog Soldiers exudes it and I would
trade that for all the flighty goofs in IV.

I'm not sure I believe in that one big book theory

rich