Aryan Rand & Rip

[Terrance]

It seems Mafia (V.) is a parody of Rand. Several people have noted this. 

But Pynchon's characters (even minor ones) are usually invested with
more than one real person, literary character, trend, idea, philosophy,
so on. And, they have "lives" of their own.   So, although Mafia has
Rand in her, I don't think it is safe to assume that all of Mafia's
character traits can be traced to Rand, Pynchon's reading of Rand, 
Pynchon's parody of Rand. For instance, I'm not convinced that Mafia's
racism and "Aryanism" (although this seems more likely the case than
racism and anti-Semitism) are parodies of Rand. For example, I'm not
sure that Schwartz (the weak, Jewish psychopath and villain of in her
last novel) is only a Pynchon's parody of Rand or that Pynchon is
suggesting that Rand is/was anti-Semitic. Just as Mafia's "characters
[fall] into disturbingly predictable racial alignment" Pynchon's don't.
He has deliberately 

However, I think  Pynchon, if he read much of Rand, read the novels and
reviews of them.
Certainly he was aware of the Rand crew and he is having a bit of fun
with them, but he did not have access to much of the philosophical stuff
at the time he was writing V.
It's possible that he did find racism and anti-Semitism in Rand's
Aryanism, a reading that seems to be refuted by her philosophical
writings. I could be all wrong here, but I think I would need to read
some passages from a Rand's novels to convince me that her writing
reveals some deep and disturbing racist and anti-Semitic ideas. 

Pynchon, even as young author, mixes things up in a postmodern parodic.
He has lots of fun with Romance. So Rand?  

Pynchon's parody of Romance continues in GR. As in Rand, we meet 
Romantic figures in Modern rather than the usual medieval settings. In
Rand,  as titans of industry. In Pynchon, as  mock Pavlovian scientists
dreaming of Nobels. In both,  rather than knights on horseback, we find
modern romantic heroes adept with  machines or mock romantic heroes
stumbling over, falling off, getting caught in, merging with them. We
find mistresses and spies rather than damsels. 

But P takes on so many authors. Stencil has bit of mock Graves in him
and Henry Adams.

 In VL, Pynchon  opens with a parody of Irving's Rip.  Why Irving?
Irving was a conservative. So is Pynchon just having fun with Irving. I
think Rip's combination of nostalgic humor and political barbs,
forestalling what some of Irving suffers from (sentimentality, a
criticism of VL too) may have been attractive to Pynchon. Zoyd, like
Rip, is saved or reborn into a new age and is freed from sin (his sin
being his loss of virginity to Hector and BV&Co.). While the Reagan 80s
tries to cast Zoyd as a long haired feminine failure, a clown under
control and disabled by Capitalism's cozy check in the mail, Zoyd has a
new social function in the Pynchon 80s. Like Rip, his function is to
wake and live a life denied him in the past, to wake up a life
constantly threatened by the media made pornography of his lived
experiences. Rip becomes a favorite among the "rising generation." He
embraces and is embraced by the preterit. For this to happen, Time
(which threatens to make Rip little more than an old man out of time and
make Zoyd a TV image) must function as a process of social Integration.
What makes this Integration through Time possible in both novels, is
fantasy (escapist wishing for the possibility of). In both stories we
are drawn into a realm of peace, refuge, unity, love. 


In Rip's America and in  Vineland the Good there is "something strange
and incomprehensible about the unknown that inspires awe."