Vineland's verisimilitude

[LBernier at tribune.com]

     Paul Murphy sez:
     
     Much more interesting (for me, given my Gen-X subject position) is the 
     80's teenspeak TRP conjures with the voice of Prairie, which I find 
     exaggerated but generally accurate (I mean, rilly). And then there's 
     Takeshi's voice, which exactly replicates the speech patterns of 
     dubbed Japanese monster-movies -- his voice doesn't sound like a 
     botched attempt at verisimilitude, more like an entirely mediated 
     Western experience of Japanese speech (and I would argue that the 
     'mediatedness' of TRP's polylogue novel is the source of much of its 
     comedy).
     
     Paul

I have to agree. 

Vineland takes place around 1982, yes?  I turned 18 in 1982, which puts me 
in Prairie's cohort agewise.  I personally found Pynchon's depiction of the 
80's subculture to be dead on, and very funny, having been a part of it, 
rilly.  Interestingly, I think VL's accessability is what led me, the first 
time I read it, to dismiss it as somewhat lightweight.  It's playing off 
riffs which are current for that time, such as mall rat kids with burned 
out hippy parents, the sudden onslaught of TV badness that cable unleashed 
on the world, fear of the Japanese economic takeover by our parents, while 
kids ate up Speed Racer and Star Blazers (ok, who remembers that one?) and 
Sony Walkman.  I didn't even have to think about it when I first read it, 
it was my world it was describing.

Can't comment on the 60s speak, though.

---->;-D

Jean.