Vineland & Left is Right

[Doug Millison]

Intriguing passages, calbert.
So, with regard to Frenesi, Pynchon (or maybe better to say the "implied
Pynchon" we're being so careful to talk about these days) gives us both
nature and nurture, genetics and environment, with the emphasis on the
latter. The family and social milieu she grows up in (secrets, underground
political activity, fear of the authorities -- not terribly dissimilar from
the atmosphere of 1984, actually, or to the stories we hear of people grow
up in former Soviet-bloc countries) does part of the work, this Pynchon
works out in some detail, family histories taking up so much of Vineland.
Then he turns to the rather sketchier genetic argument, not nearly so well
worked out as the family and social influences. It's interesting that he
chooses to mention genetics but clearly the novel would seem to concern
itself primarily with the way what Frenesi and the other major characters do
in Vineland grows out of the way their families and the larger society
(including media -- film and TV -- and politics) have shaped them. The
genetics thing seems to pop in out of left field, like those aliens on the
airplane. Which is not to say they're not important (Pynchon comes back to
genetic engineering, if I remember correctly, in his Is It OK to be
Luddite? essay which appeared about the time Vineland was published, same
year anyway); certainly I've often argued in this forum that sometimes a
thing takes on heightened significance in a Pynchon novel from the fact that
it's mentioned only a single time, or left out altogether (the way M&D skips
over the Revolution, as we discussed at length when we were reading and
discussing that a few years ago).  I don't think a Vineland reader can
argue, successfully, that Frenesi's attraction to men in uniform and her
willingness to submit to same accrues from genetics alone -- the social,
political, familial influences play a huge role.