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

[Mark Kohut]

Alice,

I, for one, would love you to attach some of these obs to specific lines, scenes and 'authorial intentions' therefore failings in IV....would really enliven, and deeped, the conversation, imho.

Mark

--- On Thu, 9/3/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV BIG DISCUSSION [spoiler] Compare & Contrast section, P. 32
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, September 3, 2009, 8:53 PM
> 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.
>