Just one word

[David Carroll]

To: pynchon-l at sfu.ca

Kevin Crosby wrote:
> I'm new here, and there's one thing that has been bugging me for a
> while, and that is the origin of the title _Vineland_.  I haven't read
> any definitive account of where it came from. My two favorite ideas
> right now are related to the name Audrey Vinelander in Nabokov's _Ada_,
> _Ada_, and the Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter of _Finnegans Wake_, where
> the word Vineland appears (the word owlglassy is also in that chapter,
> I think it's "owlglassy bicycles").
> So has the source or reason behind the title been pinned down?

I had taken the title as the Norse reference to America from their early
voyages to Newfoundland and perhaps much farther south. I think this ties
in well with the theme of the strange fabric of America. Thanks, Kevin,
for these other two associations. _Ada_ is one of my favorites, and yet
oddly enough I'd never made that connection. My Joycean studies so far
have stalled with beginning efforts on the Wake. I loved _Ulysses_, but
I think it's generally agreed that only one chapter of that is on the
difficulty level of the entire Wake. The Robinson and Campbell skeleton
key has been an immense help in the little progress I've made on the
Wake, and I'm hoping that with that in hand, I'll finally finish it
someday.
This list is, to put it mildly, *very* quite, and so I'm looking
forward to some discussion of Kevin's thread. Any takers?
Dave Carroll                     "A screaming comes across the sky."
bdcarrd1 at budget.bitnet           _Gravity's Rainbow_
bdcarrd1%budget at cunyvm.cuny.edu   Thomas Pynchon