Fwd: Re: Vineland, anonymity, limbo

[Ronkarate at aol.com]

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Forwarded message:
From:	jsevers1 at swarthmore.edu (jeff severs)
To:	Ronkarate at aol.com
Date: 96-01-31 15:27:51 EST

Ronkarate writes:
...>A few premature observations on _Vineland_. I think that the prevalent
>viewpoint in this group that _VL_ is somehow more personal than the other
>works is somewhat unfounded. Sure, it has an overtly nostalgic aura, but
that
>nostalgia is not, to this reader, grounded in any particular POV. I, too,
>began feeling that this was some misty eyed reminiscence of the sixties
until
>I reached the following passage:
>"Brock Vond's genius was to have seen the activities of the sixties left not
>threats to order but unacknowledged desires for it. While the Tube was
>proclaiming youth rebellion against parents of all kinds...Brock saw the
>deep...need only to stay children forever, safe inside some extended
national
>family."
>Some 200-plus pages into _VL_, my images of these characters were completely
>changed by this passage. I'm not making any assumptions as to what was
>intended, but it seems that trying to pinpoint TRP's particular Grand Scheme
>or Great Message (as Gore Vidal does in the recently posted quote) is
futile.

Premature observations, indeed. Almost all Pynchon characters are born into
their worlds premature. Your pointing out this passage reminds me of a
question I had while recently rereading Vineland: what's to be made of the
persistence of adolescent characters in the Pynchon corpus? They're
everywhere, of course, these characters who won't grow up, from Pig Bodine
to Zoyd Wheeler, but Vineland seems distinct: the passage you quote
suggests a complicity between the adolescent mindset and forms of social
domination, and Zoyd seems to me to be one of the few Pynchon characters
who has to mature in any normal sense (becoming a good father, better than
his permanent-adolescent double, Flash, Frenesi's new husband). Is this an
indication of Pynchon's own maturation? Fatherhood?

John Limon, in _Writing after War_, connects GR, Catch-22, and
Slaughterhouse-Five through their adolescence: maladjusted, kid-like
characters, the voice so indulgent of the gross-out joke, and even, Limon
claims, a sense of temporal disjunction (Billy Pilgrim unstuck in time,
C-22's deja vu, GR's cause/effect mix-ups). He uses Erickson to discuss the
last, suggesting narrative structure comes from/characterizes the confusing
stage in a child's development. Ultimately his argument doesn't make much
of adolescence qua adolescence, but it's a good start on something I
haven't seen any other Pynchon critics handle. Anyone have any other
thoughts on this fascinating topic?

Jeff