vineland

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

Remember that abomination of Stone's (a TV minseries) called "Wild 
Palms"?  The whole way through, I kept thinking that Stone had been aware 
of _Vineland_ and maybe GR too.  Just an aside.

I think the thing about _Vineland_ that confounds so many is that lack of 
obvious Pyncyhon touches, clouding over the possibility of starting 
anything new, which, Paul says is what the book's about.  There are 
principles of dynamic systems at work in Vineland Co/_Vineland_.  In 
Vineland Co., yes, new beginnings are nearly impossible because of the 
fact that all human relationships are mediated by the wire.  But I 
believe this becomes part of Pynchon's characteristically veiled ethical 
orientation.  Think about it.  When I first read _Vineland_, it was my 
first PYnchon (cigarette anyone?)  I recall thinking of the TV references 
and the whole obvious concern for the omnipresent gaze as quite clever.  
Yeah, it's too obvious.  But for me, _Vineland_ did bring back real 
emotions and memories that anchored me to a past I cannot deny and one 
that is the structure upon which new information continues to alter it, 
sometimes in minute ways and other times in more substantial ones.  While 
Joseph Slade may think references to "The Brady Bunch" and "Gilligan's 
Island" are mundane, I find in them a whole host of thoughts and feelings 
that underscore the notion of that wire as a force as powerful as Pynchon 
makes it--no Orwellian prophecy here, but history.  I think of laying on 
our fuzzy red pillow watching Gilligan drive that car they made out of 
thatched palm leaves, or of how I, as a pudgy adolescent, envied Ginger 
and her inventiveness when it came to crushing berries for makeup (later, 
there were tubes and compacts, but anyhow. . .)  I remember wishing that 
my parents could be as concerned about me as Carol and Bob (is that his 
--no, it's Mike) Mike Brady.
So even as these thoughts brought both pain and pleasure, one thing 
seemed certain;  like it or not, that box had shaped me and continues to 
do so.  That critics have approached the text expecting another GR is 
testimony to Pynchon's understanding of human cognitive faculties, those 
same set of prescriptive tendencies that drive the desire to examine 
empirical data, to make the infinity of human experience fit into neat 
equations, the same drive that developed thermonuclear weaponry.
So the book is flat?  Maybe if we stopped even briefly, before condemning 
it as juvenile, we would find the recuperative power of _Vineland_.  It 
isn't necessarily all bad, either.  If we could suspend the awareness of 
our appellation "scholar" for a few, reading without bringing so much 
"training" with us, we might see more than a langauge "pounded flat."  WE 
might see how _Vineland_ operates, not simply to reveal what seems like 
an obvious (and for many) lamentable fact, but how it serves to expose 
our hypocrisy--for even as we now claim to be immune to TV's 
invasiveness, we must see that we cannot make such a claim.  _Vineland_ , 
itself, has, unfortunately, taken on some of the contemptuous qualities 
some schoalrs associate with TV.  And we end up eating cream pie.

In Gaddis' _JR_, we read of Jack Gibbs' mantra "Don't bring a God damned 
thing to it, can't take a God damned thing from it."  We bring more to 
_Vineland_ than we may care to believe.  Suppressing this fact, we take 
little away.  And like a Thanatoid, looking to the Tube for sustenance, 
Pynchon's fans and publishing scholars looked to _Vineland_ for more of 
what had sustained them for so long.  They found that it was something 
different, something they'd rejected long ago, and found that indeed, the 
language was "flat."  For critics and scholars unwilling to acknowledge 
that "it is too late," the imperative that drove GR, the messages, and 
the power of _Vineland_ to redeem for each reader her/his own individual 
(although networked) emotions, memories, etc, fades, and they are among 
the Zoyd Wheelers of the world, who think that by staging 
transfenestration,proclaiming to the world immunity to indoctrination, 
expose their own hypocrisy and eventually fade away.  Meanwhile, Prarie, 
Judith Chambers' "postmodern Goddess," like Katje of GR, does not wither 
in the face of her ambiguous, fragmented reality, but is able to move on, 
her "wheel still turns, no matter how strangely" (Chambers 269).  She is 
left offerring hope for redeeming humanity, however perverse and 
distorted from any "natural" sense of it.  Donna Haraway anyone?

BTW, this is not meant to condemn any ideas of late, I was just up 
thinking.  I've got to plan a class now.  Please respond, harshly, if 
youlike.  I'm working out some thoughts for a paper.

Bonnie