Redemption

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

ERIC WRITES:
> 
> The convergence of multi-media technology, market economic systems, 
> and desire is precisely the story of GR. The "redemption" of Vineland 
> is only possible because Pynchon loses his materialist vision of the 
> cosmos, an error that resigns Vineland to the ever growing scrapheap 
> of regressive modernist mythic hippy-dippy shit. It's "too late" precisely because
> GR describes a cosmic materialist production process--desiring production, 
> molecular synthesis--that is today still driving global capitalism. In 
> fact, the counterforce of GR, or all of us for whom it is too late, 
> simply mis-understand (as does the whole of Vineland) that Capitalism 
> is the revolution itself...

Whereupon I ask:  can anyone say what GR is "precisely" about?  That 
anyone thinks s/he can seems more allusive to the fabric of _Vineland_ 
than anything I can think of as "hippy-dippy shit," which, to me, seems 
indicative of the kind of Zone wandering that compells characters to act, 
to make choices, and that unproblematically.  

Also, if _Vineland_ seems removed from thematic concern for what you 
notice in GR as "a cosmic materialist production process," could you 
explain how that is so?  With TV at the heart of every 
encounter/character/episode, how can you overlook your own definition and 
imply that the novel seems indicative of Pynchon's forgetfulness, as if 
to suggest he'd just gone and forgotten to include the part about how 
we're always already co-opted?

Also, I wonder what you mean about the counterforce in GR--that it's the 
counterforce for whom "it is too late."  I'm not sure that distinction is 
made, implied, or in any other manner expressed.  Unless I just missed 
the point, which would probably be a good thing.

I am glad you point me in the direction of ANTI-OEDIPUS.  I have been 
meaning to read it for a long time and my recent interest in Beckett 
fuels that drive.  Is there really no EXPLICIT mention of TRP, relative 
to BEckett.  Reading the 3 novels, I'm astonished at the obvious 
indebtedness of Pynchon to Beckett--unless, of course, it's one of those 
negotiations in the cultural matrix that never really happened on one plane.

Thanks for the suggestion, anyhow.  I am taking my doctoral exams at the 
end of June so will most likely only scan ANTI-OEDIPUS.  Maybe I'll have 
some questions (MAYBE ???)

Bonnie