PYNCHON IN PULSE

[jporter]

Steely cleaves into the "sacred wood" of Vineland:

"The integrity of the work itself, its
structure, is all--is there another word for it?--fucked up. It's
playwriting. A loosely connected montage of out takes. Mindless, perhaps,
but not always a pleasure--if you know what I mean..."

With all due respect, yes I know what you mean, you mean you didn't much
care for the performance. I am certainly not here to convert you. Unlike
Oedipa looking down from the heights on sunbaked San Narciso, if you have
eyes to see and ears to hear you can see quite clearly the structure, and
more than any of the other novels, the feeling and even the intended
meaning of the author. Vineland is the work of a much more mature author
than the author of GR, and certainly of V. It is also more honestly
revealing of the author's sensibilities. Whether or not it is of equal
"literary" value is another question. But Pynchon clearly no longer needs
to prove he can write the "great novel."

I've always found it interesting, and this may not hold in your partciular
case, that the same types who criticized GR for its spectacular
introduction of all the new things it introduced into literature, loaded up
and really let TRP have it for writing Vineland, exactly because, they
seemed to say, it finally proved that he wasn't such an innovative genius
after all. In other words, they missed the boat (or rocket) the first time,
and with the "failure" of Vineland they were at last going to get the
chance to restore their own sense of literary self-worth, i.e., "There, I
told you so..."

Well they missed it twice. Vineland was a real gift to alot of us who'd
been "soldiering along for all these years" haunted by any number of
personal demons, looking for a resting place. Those of other generations or
with fewer hauntings may have been less rewarded. Tom did not let us down,
and at some obvious expense to his own "literary" reputation. He's big
enough to pick up the tab. Speaking only for myself, I have always felt
that Pynchon's writing has been sympatico with my sensibilities. I can't
say if that's because he's writing for readers like me, or, just because
what he happens to enjoy writing about, I just happen to find meaningful.
It doesn't matter. My perceptions of Pynchon's feelings for humanity as
expressed in GR were reaffirmed in Vineland.

Try the review of Vineland in The New Yorker (can't recall the author) for
a "professional" and very well written apologia.

Jody Porter