Happy Thanksgiving -

[alice wellintown]

The addictions the kids in the whole secretly integrated crew suffer
from are comensurate with their capicity for intelligent,
counter-cultural perceptions. As Pynchon sez in that SL Introduction,
the kids in the story are not too bright, not a patch on the kids in
the 80s, so they are addicted to Tom Swift, booze, jailbait, TV,
voices over the radio, pranks, vandalism, political utopias,
integration, and anarchy.  The kids in the 80s, we meet them in
Vineland, are much brighter, but their addictions too are equal to
their capicity to pay attention and to counter-culture. Moreover,
their connection to the integration of Carl and Grover is fragmented
and vanishing, has been made a commodity, a made for TV propaganda
filmfor the war on the truth/drugs. It doesn't matter if Carl is
integrated or real. What matters is how the kids fail to counter the
culture.

The kids today have no sense of this at all; they are addicted to
speed and speed kills.