the marriage motif

[Terrance Flaherty]

Here is what I wrote: 

First, I quoted  Tolstoy's famous sentence:  

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way."

Next I said, Happy families are Not all alike, but than,
Pynchon doesn't
have any happy families in his fiction. Or does he? 

In the Short Stories? Nope, there is not a happy family in
any of the short stories, right?  Lots of unhappy ones,
childless and barren, empty, television mediated, parents
conspiring against children. 

In V.? Nope, not a happy a family or marriage in V., right? 

In The Crying of Lot 49? Nope, not a happy family or
marriage in that one, right?

In GR? Nope, not a happy family or marriage in that one
either, I think? 

In VL? Nope, not a happy family or marriage in VL, right?
(This one is close to home and some may say that there is a
happy family in VL, but I don't think so, more a nostalgia
for something lost, broken and spilled). 

In M&D? 

Pynchon seems to be interested in the unhappy family, the
unhappy marriage. His fiction traces the rapid social
changes that have accompanied the "industrialized" changes
to American social institutions, including the  family and
marriage. 

Whatever we may think of these changes, they have increased
the stresses on family, marriage, and children in
particular. 

Jbor wrote: 

  "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":"


Who imposed a definition of family? Who constructed a
meaning  of happiness? 


I'll agree that all of the examples you list are families
(no quotes needed). Now, the fact that I disagreed with
Tolstoy's sentence above suggests that I was not attempting
to argue that there is a definition of happiness, subjective
or simplistic, that applies to all families.  However, with
the exception of the family get-together at the end of  VL
(which I would prefer to table for the moment) I can
demonstrate that each of the examples you mention here are
unconvincing and problematic examples of "happiness"
regardless of their status as a family (obviously any two
gathered under that name fit the definition your examples
allow, I'll agree to your definition of a family).

I don't think it is necessary to define happiness to examine
each of the examples. If you can agree to this, I will
address each of your examples and demonstrate that Pynchon
is interested in the unhappy family. In his fiction Pynchon
makes explicit how from 1930 to 1980 something has gone
terribly wrong with the connections between parents and
children. I agree with most of your comments on VL below,
however, 
I don't think TRP's politics are as simple as you suggest. 



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
est


----------
>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?