PYNCHON IN PULSE

[Steelhead]

For that dreadful preservationist Steely--out here in the gray fogs of
coastal Oregon, where Newt and President McMuffin have conspired to restart
clearcutting of our few remaining 1,000-year-old trees--to be accused by
Jody Porter of cleaving into a "sacred wood" is, well, if not sacrilegious
at least comical. In my view, Vineland never lived up to the promise of its
chilling cover.

JP asserts that "Vineland is the work of a much more mature author
than the author of GR, and certainly of V."

Of course, some might argue that "much more mature" ain't that far from
"overmature," or senascent, as if Brennschluss had already occurred (and
we--the faithful, unwavering readers--are left to scream, Brennschulss? no
it can't be this soon, can it?)

Jody sez Pynchon no longer needs to prove he can write the "great novel."

Obviously, Pynchon has no need to prove he can write a great novel. He's
already written three of them. And if he can submit crap like Vineland,
reap huge advances, have it land on the bestseller list (of all places), so
much the better for him. Hell, he deserves that and more. But do you really
believe that if you or me or even somebody like, say, the neglected Steve
Erickson or the awesome Tom Maddox (though Maddox--who seems to labor along
at Pynchonian speed--would never turn loose for public scrutiny anything as
sloppily written as Vl) had packaged Vineland up in a grocery bag and sent
it off by private courier to Little Brown, they'd've bought it?
C'MON...S-SAY-Y-Y let's try it. I bet those editors at LB haven't really
read VL anyway. All we'd have to do is change the title, a few characters
names...and wait for the rejection letter.


JP goes on: "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."

Perhaps what you're getting at is that Vineland works best as a kind of
confessional novel for the Lost Generation Part 2, a guiding testament to
the oncoming therapy state--presaged by the success of all those self-help
books, new age cults, campus PC, and that dreadful It Takes a Village by
HRC herself. But is TRP really the one to write this book. Hasn't Pynchon
become something like the Brian Wilson (or who was the original leader of
Pink Floyd, Syd somebody...starts with a B...yes, Barrett, Syd Barrett) of
contemporary literature, trundled out every now and then with his trophy
wife for inconsequential appearances just to prove that--yes, the odds are
still being defied--he's still upright, such as the Lotion interview or the
sloth piece.

Jody concludes: "My perceptions of Pynchon's feelings for humanity as
expressed in GR were reaffirmed in Vineland." No argument. But if that's
all we're after wouldn't we be better served by reading the sermons of Desmond
Tutu, the wonderful jailhouse diary of Ken Saro-Wiwa (murdered last year by
the Nigerian military dictatorship at the behest of Shell--fucking--Oil) or
the writings of Rigoberta Menshu?

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

The New Yorker review was written by film critic Terrance Rafferty, and
it is a strong and principled defense of Vineland and the unwinding of the
counterculture. I remember cheering Rafferty along at the time, because I
had just read some snotty little review by Adam Begley (Begly, Berger,
Buggerer or something like that, Kraft knows him and--last year at
least--had him lodged in some editorial niche at the obscure Lingua Franca,
a-and good riddance, I say) in a magazine I was doing some writing for at
the time--the new defunct Smart--and was feeling that Vineland was not
getting the serious attention it deserved.

Of course, the reviews weren't all bad. That quick change artist, Salman
Rushdie sent in a front page review for the NYT Book Review, praising
Vineland for, among other things, its political content. Pynchon came home,
Rushdie wrote, to write an accesible novel about what we've doing to our
country, our politics, and our children these many years. But does Vineland
really work as a political novel? If it does, it doesn't dig very deep into
what was going on in the quarter century between Nixon and Ray-Gun.
Certainly it doesn't display the sophisticated political analysis you find
in Robert Stone (A Flag
for Sunrise), anything by Ward Just, Jayne Anne Phillips, Margaret
Atwood, Carlos Fuentes (who, I've come to believe, is TRP's near equal, I
mean check out a Change of Skin or Terra Nostra), John LeCarre, or even
Rushdie himself, whose incredible The Moor's Last Sigh has received nary a
mention on this list--passed over, I guess, in favor of all the hype about
that awful pretender DF Wallace.

Maybe its all about fractals, afterall.

Steely