V-2nd: The Whole Sick Crew

[Scott Drake]

why not look at WSC as representations of a mediated version of the beats?  i mean often as not P's getting at the difficulty of articulating "lived experience" through writing and more so how the reality one meant to describe is altered in the process of trying to describe it.  use the beats as an example, the fact that on this list its been said that there are different versions of the beats, the "real" ones and the pop-culture version, nevermind the one that will exist in those coming to them for the first time in 2010. Which one of these is authentic?  And who gets to lay claim to that authenticity?  

if i was more bold i might try to tie this into Profane's anxieties around the inanimate...maybe thinking rather than his fear of the animate becoming inanimate, the inanimate becoming animate and then to the troubled question of the supposed reality (as opposed to their status as representations) of fictional characters themselves?  I mean is the reference point for the WSC an unmediated reality or is it already mediated?

a plist newbee

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Fiero" <rfiero at gmail.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 8:06:40 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: V-2nd: The Whole Sick Crew

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.