Cathy's reading of Vineland

[Dave Monroe]

Well, I think the point was, and this seemed to be
Rushdie's, that, in Vineland, Reagan's budget cut does
not so much "save" the day from Brock Vond, as it
assumes that the day has already been won (or lost,
depending on which side you're on ...) to the point
that Vond's efforts are superfluous, his "villainy" no
longer necessary as the "villainous" has become the
status quo.  Again, and a bit further ...

"But what is perhaps most interesting, finally, about
Mr. Pynchon's new novel is what is different about it.
What is interesting is the willingness with which he
addresses, directly, the political development of the
United States, and the slow (but not total)
steamrollering of a radical tradition many generations
and decades older than flower power. There is a
marvelously telling moment when Brock Vond's
brainchild, his school for subversion in which lefties
are re-educated and turned into tools of the state, is
closed down because in Reagan's America the young
think like that to begin with, they don't need
re-education. 

"What is interesting is to have before us, at the end
of the Greed Decade, that rarest of birds: a major
political novel about what America has been doing to
itself, to its children, all these many years. And as
Thomas Pynchon turns his attention to the nightmares
of the present rather than the past, his touch becomes
lighter, funnier, more deadly. And most interesting of
all this is that aforementioned hint of redemption,
because this time entropy is not the only
counterweight to power; community, it is suggested,
might be another, and individuality, and family. These
are the values the Nixon-Reagan era stole from the
60's and warped, aiming them back at America as
weapons of control. They are values that Vineland
seeks to recapture, by remembering what they meant
before the dirt got thrown all over them, by recalling
the beauty of Frenesi Gates before she turned. 

"Thomas Pynchon is no sentimentalist, however, and the
balance between light and dark is expertly held
throughout this novel, so that we remain uncertain
until the final pages as to which will prevail, hippie
heaven or Federal nemesis. And we are left, at the
last, with an image of such shockingly apt moral
ambiguity that it would be quite wrong to reveal it
here." 

http://www.vheissu.be/bio/eng/eng_vine_rushdie.htm

--- David Morris <fqmorris at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Toby, she already posted the answer, but here it is
> condensed (and her point was a good one, worth
> repeating):
> 
> "The 1960s   radicals (and the peaceful apolitical
> potsmokers whom  Pynchon treats with sentimental
> affection) do not even have the satisfaction of 
> defeating Brock Vond,  who is defeated by his own
> side. Ronald Reagan, like a half-conscious deus ex
> machina, wakes from a dream and, by cutting Vond's
> budget, interrupts him in mid-villainy."
> 
> So maybe you owe her an apology, or does your
> universe not see that she was correct?

That's in part what I meant by not jumping to
conclusions (on someone else's behalf, in someone's
name, or, perhaps more accurately, claiming them as
authorizing one's own) that they didn't quite make. 
The "shocking apt moral ambiguity" Rushdie in turn
claims for Pynchon's Vineland refers rather to the
ending both he and, later, Cathy ("Cathy"?) rightly
point to, and ending which, however, does not endorse
or whatever the Reagan administration et al. (again,
jumping to conclusions ...), but, rather, makes a
statement about American history and the American
political condition or whatever, one which,
incidentally, that budget cut seems to recognize as
well, that entanglement (vine-land), perhaps (a la
GR)that "knotting into" ...  

A-and, hey, though we really perhaps ought to spend a
little time recapping M&D (which I take as, among
other things, a tentative offering of some keys to the
other novels), and while I still can't belive Slow
Learner hasn't been taken up here yet, if there's
interest in Vineland, I'm certainly due for a
rereading (it'll be my first) ...

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