IVIV BIG DISCUSSION [spoiler] Compare & Contrast section, P. 32

[alice wellintown]

Well, IV is a crappy book. Not just because we expect so much more
from this author, but because it fails to do anything well. It's no
mystery why so many are interested in Bigfoot; he provides the few
good laughs and the little bit of human feeling a reader can scrape
out of this bottom of the beach bucket jellyfish on LSD pretending to
parody a half-boiled potbroiler. It disappoints a good reader more
than VL did. That, of course, excludes you, Robin. You have to read a
few great  novels before you can separate the crap from the
masterpieces. IV is crap.   As to the moral vantage point, IV is
re-tread. It too is focused on the end of the 1960s and the Turnings
and Snitches and idealists who smoke and dope themselves into
believing that they were not like everyone else and could, despite all
the death that was raining down on other people's heads as they wasted
their youth distancing themselves from any practical or pragmatic
effort to help. Blame it on Luck or Fate or God or Government, but
never grow up and take responsibility. That's the message in those two
California novels. Hard for some old hippie to take in the ass, but
Pynchon rams it right up their Tubes.

Almost cut my hair,
It's getting kinda RFK-looking long

As to the labor stuff: the kids just couldn't handle the reality of
the school of hard knocks off the college campus. Campus activity
don't even bust your cherry, kid. The real struggle was always a
worker struggle, always will be. That the kids, for a bunch of
reasons, decided that it was their struggle, was their own failure to
see the reality, not labors.  It's not a matter of labor being clean.
Nobody is clean. It's politics. It's dirty and bloody. It's a matter
of maturity. The kids were too into drugs and stupid kid shit. Frenesi
was right. She nailed it. They were just playing little kid games with
Death.