Mucho in Vineland

[j minnich]

>From Richard Romeo:
>
>Mr. M:  I don't agree.  Mucho plays the important (though I admit 
>ambivalently) role of the consequences of the darker dise of the 
>60s--that of drug abuse.  His little cornocopia of relics attributes to 
>that fact.  Also, his idealism such that it was in 49 is shown to be in 
>Vineland just as phony as Frenesi's and Zoyd's.  Not to belabor the point 
>but he truly belongs in Vineland.  Characters or at least readers 
>understanding responsibility for their actions of the past.  Now if Pig 
>Bodine appeared, then we would have a case...hmmm?
>
> Richard Romeo


But it could have been just anybody.  Mucho's big weakness in COL49 wasn't
drugs, as I recall, but rather jailbait.  In V-land enough druggie types had
already been introduced to have one of 'em play the Count Drugula part
without needing to bring Mucho in.  The question remains in my mind: why
Mucho?  Especially since his reappearance in V-land recalls COL49, a novel
which Pynchon has been rumored to dislike.  My first impression of V-land,
back when it appeared, was that it had been written by a committee of
impostors, trying to do up a believable but fake "Pynchon novel."  It just
seemed too puerile for TRP, similar in that respect to the heftier novels of
Jim Dodge such as _Stone Junction_ and _Not Fade Away_ (both of which I've
never been able to finish).  It was Mucho's gratuitous reappearance,
seemingly in some sort of effort to authenticate V-land by creating a
connection with COL49, and the annoying "cool cars" aspect of V-land that
grated most at first.  Later on I found things to like in V-land.

Mucho's nasal plight seemed to recall _V._ and _GR_ a little bit, too.  Who
could forget Rachel's nose job?  Or the giant adenoid?  Or Richard M.
Zhlubb, who didn't want to "dabe dabes?"  Is there a consistent nasal theme
in Pynchon's work?  

I used to have a prof who frequently ended his sentences with "...hmmm?"
He'd been at Columbia or someplace like that before coming to California.  I
remember him reading some Blake or Wordsworth, always holding the book about
four inches away from his nose, because he was so near-sighted, and offering
his little suggestions which always ended with "....hmmm?" and a little
smile.  It was all quite engaging.  

-j minnich
---------------------------------------------------------------
The poet is dead.
Nor will ever again hear the sea lions 
Grunt in the kelp at Point Lobos.
Nor look to the south when the grunion 
Run the Pacific, and the plunging
Shearwaters, insatiable, 
Stun themselves in the sea.  
   -Wm. Everson