Pynchon synchronicity learned today

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I'm lucky enough to have a wonderful family, but I know too many who don't. Pynchon's relatively late marriage/fatherhood does seem to have affected his subsequent works, which are marred by the "in the end, family's all ya got" Hallmark-ish sentiment (though M&D seems to emphasize friendship more than family). ATD has a more complex view of family structure, but at the end it's still the Chums of Chance and their new-found family status. The family thing seems a little more pointed: get your shit together and get familied. It somehow implies that we can make the world better by focussing on our personal connections. Keep cool but care may be an earlier incarnation of that. But don't think either attitude is expressed in either COL49 or GR. Those books tell us to keep looking outward.

Laura 


-----Original Message-----
>From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>

>There was some great talk here years and years ago about how even the
>"keep cool but care" of V. was early Pynchon grappling with the issue
>and trying to come up with a system for living that might work, but
>that it felt mawkish and out-of-place given how thoroughly he would
>later reject any such universal notions. Maybe he embraced the
>possibility that you can live a great life without imposing any
>absolute order on it. Also part of the reason some have found fault
>with the later family-centric novels, as if he is shrugging and saying
>"in the end, family's all ya got."

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