Bleeding Edge's pear tree....yes?

[Mark Kohut]

Thanks,Joseph.....as written I was all wrong. You point out what the
sixties meant and
I concur in general...and I think Pynchon does to in many themes of all his
books

What I should have written was that a Vineland major theme was how
the ideals, particularly the ideals of a political/social movement that
changed America more, and for the better, more
particularly as Pynchon himself wrote, how the New Left, the best vision of
Social change America ---The Port Huron Statement
is a wonderful near-utopian document that was not utopian (in the sense of
nowhere possible)



On Mon, Sep 14, 2026 at 9:34 PM Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com> wrote:

> I think that is an absurd assertion , both about the 60s and Vineland.
> The 60s was a time of remarkable change and liberation, releasing forces
> and Ideas we still live with, many rooted in the core ideals of
> constitutional liberty and hearkening back to revolution against empire,
> but equally important was the ecology movement, the renunciation of
> McCarthyism, a challenge to imperial war, the women's liberation
> movement, the civil rights movement, the farmworkers movement, the
> revival of grass roots folk music, the mainstreaming of black  R&B black
> entertainers and feisty black athletes like Muhamed Ali, psychedelics,
> Food co-ops with healthier food options,  a flourishing of all arts, ...
> the list is long and I could go on. Some of the best leaders of this
> liberating change did not fail at all. They were murdered, not by lone
> nuts, but by the state. State criminality was exposed, in MK Ultra,
> Vietnam, This is something made quite explicit in Vineland. By any
> measure state violence and war crimes far exceeded any leftist
> revolutionary violence.
>      Like all big changes some shifts were shallow, passing,
> commercialized, but I had enough of a taste of Mcarthyism and Nixon  and
> LBJ to know why the opposition was so powerful and necessary. The
> culture wars and the real wars and the warlike addictions of both
> political parties continue, but change begins within and spreads through
> the cultures we build..  If there is failure it is much larger than any
> ten years or any of the human movements of an era. We have to take
> responsibility ourselves. We are all creating history in our affinities
> and lived lives.
>
> On 9/14/26 7:02 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> > I read Nixon's novel as not unlike Vineland. Why the sixties failed...
> >
>