Cathy's reading of Vineland

[cathy ramirez]

--- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
> 
> "Vond is conveniently "faded out" (via a budget cut)
> in Chapter 15 to enable
> the Happy Ending."
> http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/intro.htm


Not sure about that happy ending. 
If we assmume the essay is correct and Frenesi is an
allegorical figure and if F is  1960s America and the
tradition of the political Left in America and if she
betrays that Left tradition because of some inherited
sexual attraction for facscism (Brock) can the ending
be a happy one? 

At the end of the novel Praire is calling for Brock's
return. 

The essay does not take up the Questing figure of the
novel--Prairie. If we assume that Prairie is an
allegorical figure too how can the ending be a happy
one? At the end of the novel Prairie is calling for
Brock's return.  Prairie, like her mother,  is 
attracted to Brock. Her attraction to him is inherited
from her mother. She too is sexually attracted to the
fascist Brock. Zoyd, her father, who lusts after jail
bait,  reminds her to keep her teen bimbo legs closed.
Why? Zoyd cuts a deal with the fascists. He gives up
his virginity to the fascists. He does this to protect
the virginity of his daughter--the Prairie, but he
can't protect her from her inherited attraction for
fascism. F says when she thinks with her V-spot she
gets in trouble, meaning she betrays the Left. 
Prairie is attracted to Brock and men in uniform 
early in the novel  because she is on a quest to find
her mother. She thinks that Brock and  Hector can
reunite her with her mother. But why is she still
calling for Brock's return at the end. There is a
determinism in Pynchon's fiction. In his characters it
is  something inherited, something biological and
magnetic that pulls and repels
them, that binds them in an S&M dance. And I don't
hink we can disentangle the dancers--the  gun, the
penis, the camera, the rocket, the cross, the dynamo &
the Virgin nor distinguish the dancers from the dance.


That ambiguity does not undercut Pynchon's moral
position. Reagan is not our savior. That's obvious
enough to anyone that takes the time to read his
books.
But, assuming still that the allegorical reading is
not 
a misreading (see James Wood's essay on Melville,
Pynchon, Delillo), Pynchon's allegories simply do not
permit the happy ending or the black and white
political reading that we expect from an author who is
so obviously grossed out by what has become of the
Prairie. 

Weed & That Praire

The real reunion at the end of Vineland is of the
living with the dead: a reunion with the traumatic
past (now at least partially "karmically adjusted")
and with the utopian sense of possibility that flashed
into being at the same apocalyptic moment.   


http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/papers_berger.html



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