V-2nd: The Whole Sick Crew

[Richard Fiero]

kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>The issue isn't what we on the list know or don't know of the 
>Beats.  It's what Pynchon knew when he described The Whole Sick 
>Crew.  Between growing up on Long Island and dividing his time 
>between the Cornell campus and the Navy before heading to 
>California, it's unlikely he was part of any NYC literary or music 
>scene, aside from occasional college-kid weekends or Navy liberties, 
>where he was an outsider looking in.  The W.S.C. seems derived from 
>a pop-culture mediated idea about "beatniks" rather than a personal 
>familiarity with either the Beats or even Village coffee-house 
>culture.  Do the various members of the W.S.C. strike you as 
>faithful descriptions of real people?  Any analogs you can 
>name?  Not being argumentative here - as someone who doesn't know 
>much about the period, I'm genuinely curious.
>
>Laura

We seem to have two conflicting claims.  One is that P was influenced 
by the Beats. The other is that P knew nothing of the Beats outside 
of Time magazine. Time is itself a parody and we may ask if P would 
bother to parody a parody. Of course he would and both claims are valid.
I'm no smarter than P but if I see a Time or People in a doctor's 
waiting room, I head the other way.
Wikipedia is no help here, itself being bent.
Invisible Man would have been a better choice.