re Re: Reagan in Vineland

[Doug Millison]

"He'd brought home a quickly compiled list, all independent contractors
    like themselves. Frenesi got out a couple of frozen, or with the state
    the fridge was in actually semithawed, peperoni pizzas, put the oven on
    to preheat, and made a fast salad while Flash opened the beers and read
    off the names. There were Long Bihn Jail alumni, old grand-jury
    semipros, collectors of loans and ladies on strings who'd been persuaded
    to help entrap soon-to-be ex-customers, snitches with photographic
    memories, virgins to the act of murder, check bouncers, coke snorters
    and ass grabbers, each with more than ample reason to seek the shadow of
    the federal wing, and some, with luck, able to reach its embrace and
    shelter."  (Vineland, 87.1)

Yes, you really have to hand it to Reagan-Bush for their ability to
recruit, develop, and manage the talent needed in their Administrations.
We could add more categories to this list, of course -- Central American
paramilitary death squads and international coke/heroin dealers, right-wing
thugs and dictators throughout the developing world, rogue CIA agents,
shady international arms merchants and the rest of the Iran-Contra-gate
schemers, Osama bin Laden and other proxy terrorists, etc.  Reagan-Bush
appear to have continued the practice Nixon  & Co. used when hiring and
running the Watergate operatives.  They're all lurking here in the
background of Pynchon's text.

jbor, quoting yours truly:
>They haven't been "corrupted and fucked over by the
>Reagan Administration" at all.

I guess you've just accidentally overlooked two of the major story lines in
Vineland:  the narc working overtime to pop Zoyd's cherry and turn him into
an informer against his will, and Brock Vond doing the same with Frenesi,
taking advantage of their weaknesses, tricking them, bullying them,
threatening them, using them, manipulating them, corrupting them, fucking
them over.

Brock Vond, a master of human capital management as Pynchon presents him in
Vineland,  is writing a book,  I hear, soon to be a best-seller in the
field of business leadership tactics.

>"Reaganomics" is actually helping put a stop to all this
>corruption (88.18-25).

Yes, I'm sure that's what Pynchon is trying to communicate here about the
administration that reached levels of corruption unprecedented in the
history of the Presidency -- until the Bush Jr. Administration, that is.

Of course, Republican administrations aren't alone in preying on weak
people, compromising them, bringing out their worst, exploiting them for
evil ends.  Kennedy and his men managed more than a few shady characters,
apparently including the Ralph Wayvone type if we are to believe the worst.
And dear grandpa Eisenhower was running things when we put those cuddly old
Nazi scientists to work in US weapon systems development.  Pynchon takes
these into account as well in his work.

Pynchon also does a pretty good job of distinguishing  criminals (like von
Braun) from outlaws like Zoyd -- a distinction you may not have seen him
make in his introduction to the novel, _Stone Junction_. Vineland moves
rather insistently towards a denouement in which the "trailer trash"
(jbor's colorful phrase) redeem themselves as they recover from their
exploitation as pawns of the elite and develop their more positive human
qualities through love, family, and community. Remember what Pynchon's
generational cohort, Bob Dylan, sang:  "But to live outside the law you
must be honest" ("Absolutely Sweet Marie").

P.S.  Looking back at jbor's query about the connection between W.C. Fields
and Pynchon's characterization of Washington in M&D, perhaps he's not aware
of the verbal mannerism adopted by Fields and epitomized by the title of
his movie, "My Little Chickadee," in which he uses a series of such
endearments, calling Mae West "my little mud hen" and many more phrases
which Pynchon seems to be recalling when he has Washington use phrases such
as "my Treasure" and"my Nosegay of Virtues" in addressing Martha. That part
of the characterization is sweet, I'll admit, but for my money doesn't
altogether take off the sharp edge of the slave-owner, real estate
huckster, dealing-with-less-than-a-full-deck Washington that Pynchon works
so hard to create.