antw. vineland's 'they'

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

cathy ramirez schrieb:

> --- Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Petillon and, perhaps ironically, given his
> > cryptographic bent, I take as reading Lot 49 as
> > presenting a bit of a Purloined Letter, "secrets"
> > hidden in plain sight.  By the time of Vineland
> > (setting, publication), such "secrets" aren't even
> > so well hidden ...

>  A common complaint about VL is that when the 
> insidious and ambiguous THEM/THEY/FIRM/Gnostics are
> exposed through overt political references, Pynchon's
> paranoid prose, certainly one of the things that makes
> GR a great novel, suffers or is even reduced to
> political/nostalgic screed. 

> I'm not saying that Dave Monroe shares this opinion. 

> Are THEY exposed in VL? Or are THEY absent from VL?
> Niether. 

> In VL, THEY  are not equal to
> Nixon/Reagan/Bush/Oil/FEMA/Etc. 

> In GR, THEY/THEM/FIRM/ are not equal to IG Farben and
> the US Military Industrial Complex--GE/Standard
> Oil/&Co. 

> So, is VL a lesser novel because by the the time P
> publishes it the secrets about how governemts and
> businesses operate THEY have been exposed?  No. THEY
> still operate in VL. The same paranoid irony continues
> to operate. But just as in GR, THEY are not equal to
> actual political/business machinery. 

> Certainly the connections between THEM/THEY and actual
> political/business persons/events/ are there in both
> novels. But making the the connections to
> Nixon/Reagan/FEMA/Oil is only part of the paranoid
> quest.... 


  + me too thinks that vineland's 'they' cannot be reduced to the criminal   
  business of america's power-elites. see the following passage from the pages  
  63-65 (secker & warburg edition):

  ".... aircraft that came alongside and, matching course and speed exactly to 
those of the jet, hung there, fifty feet away, windowless, almost invisible, 
sometimes for hours.

 'ufo's?'

 'not-', she hesitated, the grass skirt, which was actually polyester, rustling 
rhythmically, 'what w e'd call a ufo....'

 'well who would?'

 'just that they looked too familiar ... up from earth, for sure, not in from 
... out there or nothin'.'

 'you ever see who was flyin' 'em?'

 her eyes flickered in every direction they could before she murmured, 'i'm not 
crazy, ask fiona, ask inga, we've all seen 'm.' 

 he played four bars of 'do you believe in magic?' and squinted up at her, eyes 
mostly lingering on the synthetic skirt. 'will i see them, gretchen?'

 'better hope you don't,' but as she was soon to add, he must not've been hoping 
hard enough, because on their very next flight out of  l a x, about 37 000 feet 
above the middle of the ocean, the festive jumbo was taken, the way a merchant's 
ship and cargo might be by pirates, an easy target, an aluminum shell dainty as 
a robin's egg to the other, which was solid, smaller, of higher mass and speed. 
as gretchen had foretold, not exactly a ufo. the captain took what evasive 
action he could, but the other matched his maneuvers exactly. finally they 
stood, side by side above the tropic of cancer, between them, some twenty meters 
across, a flow of savage wind, as, slowly, not telescoping out, by assembling 
itself from small twinkling pieces of truss-work, the other spun across to them 
a windproof access tunnel, with a cross section like a long teardrop, that 
locked firmly on to the forward hatch of the boeing.

 in the plane, passengers milled among the resined hatch-cover tables, the 
plastic tikis and shrubbery, clutching their oversize paper-parasoled drinks, 
zoyd attempting to keep up a medley of peppy tunes. nobody knew what was going 
on [a key-sentence in pynchon's universe: keiner weiß mehr.... kfl]. arguments 
started. through the port-side windows could be observed the burnished seams, 
the glowing engines of the other. last sunlight lay in bands at the horizon, and 
some of the windows had begun to ice up, not in the quiescent way of frost on a 
kitchen window on earth, but in a stressed clash of jet-speed geometries.

 when the hatch at last sighed open, the intruders entered the flying nightclub 
with elite-unit grace, automatics ready, faces dim behind high-impact shields, 
all business. everyone was ordered to a seat. the captain came on the p a. 'this 
is for our own good. they don't want all of us, just a few. when they get to 
your seat number, please cooperate, and try not to believe any rumors you hear. 
and till we get the rest of you where your tickets say you're going, all drinks 
are on the kahuna [hi nika!] airlines contingency fund!' which brought loud 
applaus but would prove, in the drawn-out litigation attending this incident, to 
have been an appeal to a ficitional entity.
 
 gretchen dropped by the synthesizer just to take a breather. 'this is fun,' 
zoyd said. 'first time i ever heard the cap'n's voice. if he can sing 'tiny 
bubbles,' i'm out of job.'

 'everybody's nervous and drinking. what a bummer. kahuna airlines done it 
again.'

 'this doesn't happen on the majors?'

 'there was some kind of a industry-wide agreement? it would have cost more than 
kahuna wanted to spend. the word they all use is 'insurance.''

 night fell like the end of a movie...."           
        

                                           note the question-mark in gretchen's 
                                           last statement....and now please look 
                                           on your tickets: where are we going?



kfl *