Vineland & Left is Right

[calbert at tiac.net]

Jane:

> Why does Frenesi like men in uniform? Her daughter likes
> them too. What about Frenesi's mother? When one rebels
> against the System in the USA, as the 1960s youth did, it's
> a rebellion in  large measure also against parental power
> and control. But in Frenesi's case, her family has a long
> tradition of Lefty politics, so her rebellion against the
> System would not also be a rebellion against her family. To
> rebel against her family she would need to betray the cause
> of the Left and involve herself with the powerful system.
> She does. Then she marries Zoyd, a hippy. Then she takes
> off, leaves here child. 
> The child is  to be cared for by Zoyd and her mother. She
> can't handle the family life. 
> 
> More on this later.
> 
> Prairie has a boy friend. He rebels against his parents. 
> 
> Flip. 
> 
> Prairie has a girl friend. She rebels against her parents. 
> 
> Flop. 

re Frenesi:

"Her childhood and adolescence had been full enough of taps on the 
phone, cars across the street, name calling and fights in school. Not 
exactly a red diaper baby, she'd grown up more  on the fringes of 
the political struggle in Hollywood back in the 50's, but the first rule 
was still that you didn't talk about anybody else, especially not about 
their allegiances. Her mother then had worked as a script reader 
and her father, Hub Gates, as a gaffer, alwqays under dreamlike 
turns of blacklist, graylist, secrets kept and betrayed, GROWN-UPS 
ACTING LIKE THE WORST KIND OF KIDS, KIDS ACTING LIKE 
THEY KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON (emphasis cfa). As house 
receptionist, Frenesi had to learn to keep straight a whole list of fake 
names, and who used which to whom. WHATEVER IT WAS, SHE 
HATED AND FEARED IT, ONE SET OF GROWN-UPS BITTERLY 
AGAINST ANOTHER......."

(VINELAND pg. 74, LITTLE, BROWN)

SHortly thereafter follows the family history. THere is an undeniable 
"trend" in the tone of this telling.....Jess Traverse being felled, while 
playing CENTER FIELD (undeniably the position which demands 
and offers the greatest range) is almost Wily coyote
like (or should the be Benny Profane like) in losing his leg to the 
inanimate redwood sent crashing in his vicinity. By the time we get 
to Bud and Sasha, the tone is a little more "photo" realistic, the 
greater detail providing cover for the revelation of character flaws, 
pettiness, at times a somewhat grubby materialism.....

As Jane makes clear there is a process of flip/flop, one so 
paradoxical as to DEMAND a GENETIC cause.....

"...as if some Cosmic Fascist had spliced in a DNA sequence 
requiring this form of seduction and initiation into the DARK JOYS 
of social control. Long before any friend or enemy had needed to 
point it out to her, Sasha on her own had arrived at , and been 
obliged to face, the dismal possibility that all her oppositions, 
however just and good, to forms of power were really acts of 
denying that dangerous swoon that came creeping at the edges of 
her optic lobes every time the troops came marching by, that 
wetness of attention and perhaps ancestral curse...."
 
I think it worth noting that the attraction betwen EUla Becker and 
Jess Traverse was one between fellow outcasts, Jess clearly 
impresses Eula on SUBSTANITIVE grounds "Jess introduced me to 
my conscience"

by the second generation Sasha is part of a troupe, and Bud, a man 
in uniform, impresses her by other, less "noble" means.....

Sasha: "He listened to me.....first man ever did that."

Hub: "She thought I was listening.....and all's I was thinkin' was the 
usual sailor-on-liberty thoughts."

Does this reflect an effort on the part of the author to establish a 
dichotomy between "inspired individual sacrifice" vs. "collective 
resistance"? I would suggest so, any "set" of individuals involved in 
the latter will HAVE to come under the influence of the "evolutionary 
dynamics" of ANY polity - consistent with the "organic" 
historiography of, among others Oswald Spengler...

I readily admit that this reading is hardly definitive, but I could find 
other strings in P's novels which reflect a similar affinity....

love,
cfa