V-2nd - Farewell to Chapter 6

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut  wrote:

> I did not get, maybe I did get but didn't know it, how Pig and these supposedly
> cool, hip, beat types---I'd read more beat lit than Pynhcon--could do that in
> their books.
>

this always bothered me when reading Kerouac, he had these
transcendent moments and so forth but there was no sense of
responsibility,

My sense, and I could easily be wrong, is that V. is meant to be a
little different.

As a young reader, of course I sort of liked the Whole Sick Crew on
their own terms.
Umm, some people I knew were quite irresponsible (-;

But I have a different context to see the book in now.

First, Pynchon was always a lot more disciplined than Kerouac.  He
finished college with good grades.  His stop-out year was spent in
military discipline, which there's no evidence of his bridling at.
And then there's the church involvement, in at least the one (college
roommate's?) recounting.

Between that and his involvement with the folk-music scene, both via
Farina/Baez and the circles of singers he says in SL gathered on ship
decks to share music, I infer a more conservative (in the sense of
"less dissipative") viewpoint than Kerouac's.  Folk is a socially
conscious, outward-viewing art form in just about all its
manifestations, isn't it?

Secondly, Stencil is like nothing at all in Kerouac.  Simply by
appearing to break up the action he broadens the scope of V. beyond
the Whole Sick Crew.  Even as a youngster, I felt the difference.  The
juxtaposition of other sets of revelers in history is a salutary
counter to a hipster groupthink...and I can't imagine that's
unintentional.

A very close friend of mine lived in a houseful of people who gave
wild parties (this was great!)  I remember him telling me about one
party where some cat, though, tried to rape a girl on the pool table.

He was not pleased.  As a student who liked to get wild, my personal
first reaction when he said "And it got a little too wild: So-and-so
tried to rape So-and-so on the pool table," was something like
"Woo-hoo!" -- But luckily I was looking at him and saw that that
really was something that happened and very not cool.


So, I'd suggest that, just as Pynchon through Stencil builds 8
different scenes in a chapter, or through a first-hand omniscience
places a nose-job in ethno-historical context and gives a concrete
picture that's hard to forget, in Chapter 6 he de-focuses West Side
Story's story from just the teenagers, brings the family in, shows how
miserable Benny's schlemihl-hood both stems from and worsens the
socio-economic conditions around him...AND ALSO leaves us with
concrete memorable impressions of bums around the city, Fina's sleepy
eyes in the morning (and her naked self in the bathtub), the street
fair, et al.
And, like my friend, he breaks up the (in this case) statutory rape
about to occur on the pool table.



-- 
"I have left my book,
I have left my room,
For I heard your voice
singing through the gloom" - James Joyce