vineland

[Ted Samsel]

> 
Paul opines......
> 
> Dear Folks,
> Like all of you (probably) I read VINELAND the month of its
> appearance.  I haven't gone back to it yet, but at the time
> I jotted down these ten thoughts, which I thought I'd
> broadcast for what they're worth.
> 1)  Thomas Pynchon _is_ Zoyd Wheeler.  Forced to "act insane"
> to earn his living, Zoyd embodies the bind Pynchon's in:
> compelled by audience expectations to "write crazy."  (Wasn't
> the title of the NYT Rushdie review "Still Crazy etc."?)  And,
> like Tyrone Slothrop in GR (who shares Pynchon's ancestors),
> Zoyd gradually disappears from the novel, as Pynchon has
> disappeared from public view.
> 2)  The first name of the character Frenesi Gates should be
> pronounced "free 'n' easy," not "frenn-essi."

Tell big band musicians that!

> 3)  Frenesi's experiences with the 24fps film collective
> extend and riff on a similar motif in GR, namely the filming
> of Katje Borgesius and the cinema of Germany in the '20's.
> 4)  Vineland begins with a V.
> 5)  The much-cited passage from VINELAND about "God being the 
> ultimate hacker," which has so impressed critics is not a new
> metaphor on Pynchon's part, extending back as it does to LOT 49.
> "For now it was like walking among matrices of a great digital 
> computer, the zeroes and ones twinned above, hanging like
> balanced mobiles right and left,
> ahead, thick, maybe endless."
> 6)  The treatment of multinationals (Chipco) and the country
> of Japan (in the character of Takeshi Fumimota) and the
> portrayal of the girl assassin DL Chastain, all indicate
> quite convincingly that Pynchon has read and absorbed cyberpunk,
> specifically (natch) Gibson.

How hard would that be? HL Hunt in ALPACA may have pre-defined this
in the early '50s.

> 7)  _Nothing_ in VINELAND is ever brought to a conclusion.
> Hector Zuniga's stint with Tubal Detox; the monster that
> stomped Japan; the fate of the Thantoids; midair hijackings--
> everything trails off inconclusively, without final explanation.
> In a book concerned with new beginnings--check out the 
> epigram up front--this is fitting.  And the one exception to this 
> deliberate failure to resolve--the climactic ferrying of Brock
> Vond to the underworld--is apt in that he represents an old
> order hopefully now ending.
> 8)  There is only one actual place named Vineland in the US
> (according to my atlas) and it's in New Jersey.  According to
> my old Columbia desk encyclopedia (circa 1950), Vineland, NJ, is 
> "the seat of a large training school for sub-normal children,"
> a fair description of Pynchon's imaginary CA county.  The 
> historical, semi-mythical Vineland, natch, is generally thought
> to have been most likely located in New England, home to 
> P"s ancestors.

Use the new ver. of GNIS, USGS's CDROM Geographic Name Server on CDROM.
Probably get more than one "hit"!

> 9)  The funniest throwaway line in the book is "the _Italian
> Wedding Fake Book_ by Deleuze and Guattari."
> 10)  There are only two paths for an artist who has produced
> a gigantic publically acclaimed masterpiece (GR), if he
> wishes to keep on working.  To top himself or to defuse
> expectations by (temporarily) playing an easier game for
> lesser stakes.  To heighten or to simplify, in other
> words.  That Pynchon has chosen the latter course does not
> make him a coward or failure, but merely places him in
> the company of other great artists who have found themselves
> in a similar fix and chosens a similar course:  Springsteen,
> Gaddis and Prince, to name a few.

Springsteen? Prince (the guy with a non-typographic character for an
identifier?)
Spare us........

> 
> --