Cathy's reading of Vineland

[Dave Monroe]

Ah, okay, I genrally end up reading all this stuff in
reverse order of appearance, and things tend to fall
through the cracks between sessions, so ...

--- cathy ramirez <cathyramirez69 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 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 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. [...].  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....
> 
> 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 [...], 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. 
> 
> 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

Yery good, though I'd quibble with "determinism." 
Those Pynchonian texts often suggest that things might
have been different.  That "subjunctivity," that "fork
in the road," et al.  But perhaps they also take up
how history, politics, et al., so often nonetheless
manages to repeat, replicate, whatever, itself.  A-and
repetition = death wish, no?  Let me know ...

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