Pynchon as Pangloss? [was Re: Have finished ...]

[Vaska]

Meg Larson wrote:
>_Vineland_ is NOT _Gravity's Rainbow_ and I truly believe it wasn't meant
>to be.  I've read it three times now, and I enjoy it more each time.  Why? 
>'Cos Pynchon's trying to tell us something, or at least say something,
>about the way we delude ourselves into thinking that we can affect a
>meaningful change in the way things work but, at the same time, we fail to
>realize that we're pretty much at the mercy of those who are bigger than
>we; in other words, it's kinda hard to Fight the Power when ya ain't got
>none.  [SNIP] So all we can do is take our ideals and apply them to our own
>lives, and I think that's what Zoyd tried to do. [SNIP]

Just last night I went back to Salmon Rushdie and in _Imaginary Homelands,
Essays and Criticism 1981-1991_, Rushdie has a wonderful, rambling, but
admirably clear-eyed response to the Orwell of his "cultiver notre jardin"
phase.  I think what Rushdie has to say there applies well to this
Panglossian moment in Pynchon's work, too.  The essay in question is
"Outside the Whale," pp. 87-101.  [The interested reader can skip the bit on
David Attenborough and start at p. 91, instead.]

Vaska