FW: the motif of marriage

[jbor]

I think it is a static or ultra-conservative notion of "family" which
Pynchon resists. I can think of lots of temporarily and rather more
long-term "happy", or functional, family units in Pynchon's fiction,
culminating with that vibrant Becker-Traverse celebration at the close of
*Vineland*. There are a multitude of examples: it's just that they don't fit
the narrow ethnocentric definition of the institution which is being imposed
here, or the simplistic and subjective construction of what it means to be
"happy":

Dennis Flange, Nerissa and Hyacinth at the end of 'Low-lands'
Grover, Tim, Etienne (& Carl) in 'TSI'
The WSC in *V.*
Pappy Hod & Paola in *V.*
Fina, Angel, Geronimo and the Playboys in *V.*
Fausto Maijstral, Elena Xemxi and Paola in Malta in *V.*
Baby Igor and his dad in *Lot 49*
Emory, Grace and the Bortz tribe in *Lot 49*
Rog & Jess in *GR*
Weissmann and Enzian in *GR*
Pokler and "Ilse" in *GR*
Blicero and Gottfried in *GR*

And, as well as examples afforded by RC, Moonpie & clan, Zoyd, Prairie &
Desmond, and Frenesi, Flash & Justin, one of the most explicit subversions
in *Vineland* is of the American Moral Majority notion of "family values",
the Ozzie & Harriet syndrome you allude to, as propagated through all levels
of the media, in political broadcasts, television programs, and advertising,
by welfare and corporate agencies, and in the very signs and symptoms of
everyday social protocol themselves. Most of the families depicted in
*Vineland* are unorthodox at best, and dysfunctional in the main, and
Pynchon takes pains to depict many other versions of social arrangement,
surrogate "families" ‹ a rock and roll band and their girlfriends, a
towtruck and junkyard crew, the Mafia, the Kunoichi commune, sensei and
protegée, inmates in a women's prison and more ‹ which illustrate the
possibility that effective and worthwhile, and productive and protective,
human interaction can operate outside the bourgeois family unit and beyond
the moral code which has rendered it as a political and social stereo- and
archetype. The novel's televison allusions also seem to encompass
non-families or family substitutes: game show hosts and contestants, the
stowaways on 'Gilligan's Island', the bridge crew on the U.S.S. Enterprise,
police buddies in 'CHiPs' and 'Hawaii Five-0', the Road Runner and Wile E.
Coyote, Sylvester and Tweety-Pie, the Smurfs. Indeed, the Tosca, Magic
Flute, Godzilla and 'Donkey Kong' scenarios fit here as well. Certainly,
'The Flintstones' and 'The Brady Bunch' are typical enough examples of a
nuclear and post-nuclear "ideal" family respectively, however, the implicit
irony of a "modern stone age family", and the decontextualisation of the
latter program with overtones of indoctrination and eroticism (p. 33),
ensures that these references operate in a similarly subversive manner. In
the depiction of RC and Moonpie who, as virtually the only example of a
stable and happy traditional family unit in the novel, seem to have opted
out of commercial and corporatised America to live a cloistered and
subsistence lifestyle in order to achieve this harmonious state, Pynchon
engineers a further repudiation of media-generated projections of the
"ideal" American family. (35 ff).

best


----------
>From: Muchasmasgracias at cs.com
>To: Lycidas at worldnet.att.net, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: the motif of marriage
>Date: Sat, May 6, 2000, 7:55 AM
>

> Yeah, it seems like in general anti-traditionalism abounds in these books.
> What it makes me wonder sometimes is whether there's any alternative put
> forward or if it's an entirely negative spin on things?  I've heard/seen
> people who take TRP to be this wildly cynical/existential dude, but I don't
> really buy that.  Nevertheless, if it ain't so then where's the affirmative
> in there?  Does Pynchon project a world with no happy families because he
> doesn't think are people with happy home lives?