Vineland's verisimilitude

[davemarc]

I tend to agree with Paul Murphy when visiting the Vineland Room at the
Museum of Pynchon's Ear.  Takeshi's convincing, and so are Prairie and
Blood & Vato (within a Kinda Kartoony Kontext, o'Kourse).

Maybe Jules's complaint can tell us a bit about linguistics over time.  

In his "meshugginah posts" post, he writes, "if you actually lived in
Northern
California and the dope-dealing scene, as both Anita and I did, then you
find Vineland very difficult to take. The language is invented. No one
talked that way. If you don't know how they did talk, this is no big deal.
If you do, it's quite annoying and ultimately makes it impossible to enjoy
the book."

But Jules's website says:

"he has been living in Cancun with his family since 1983, in Mexico, since
1981,"

and

"In 1981, he moved with his family to Mexico, and began The Real Mexico,
currently still in progress."

and

"In 1983, he came to Cancun to work as a public relations consultant for
Fonatur, the Mexican national tourism development fund. From 1984 to date,
he has carried out various promotional and graphic design projects for
clients in tourism, publishing and government in Cancun. In 1991, he was
awarded First Prize, Computer Graphic Design, Casa de la Cultura de Cancun.
During his stay in Mexico, his works have been published in English and
Spanish by The Miami Herald, The Mexico City News, Cancun Tips Magazine,
Diario de Quintana Roo and the Caribbean News." 

This leaves me with the impression that Jules was not living in Vineland
Country in 1984, the time of those Vineland accents.   Maybe things had
changed a little in the time since Jules went south of the border.  

Pynchon admits that, in the Sixties at least, his Ear was not in good
shape.  (Perhaps some envious adversary of his had chewed it a bit too
much--it's been known to happen.)   Pynchon's implication is that his Ear
is much better in Vineland and M&D.

Regarding his use of "meshugginah," I don't think there's much of a problem
here.  As Jules and others have pointed out, it's exactly the kind of
"misuse" one might expect of a goy like George Washington.  So where's the
problem.  As Tevye might have said, it's a tradition.  Just like JFK
mangling German.

davemarc