VLVL 3 Zoyd and Hector

Don Corathers gumbo at fuse.net
Sat Aug 9 00:37:20 CDT 2003


----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2003 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL 3 Zoyd and Hector


> on 9/8/03 12:27 PM, Don Corathers at gumbo at fuse.net wrote:
>
> >> but Hector is sincere in looking out for Zoyd's best
> >> interests too.
> >
> > Please. Hector is a Tube-addled psychopath trying to run a con.
>
> And that would make him different from Zoyd how, precisely?


Well, Zoyd's not a psychopath, for starters, and he doesn't manipulate
people into deals that ruin their lives under the color of law enforcement.

>
> > He has made
> > a career out of using marginally legal means--or in Zoyd's case,
> > spectacularly felonious means--to squeeze helpless and largely harmless
> > dopers into ratting on their friends or otherwise bending to his will.
> > Recently he has become a film producer, the only job title I can think
of
> > that's less honorable than the one he had before. Hector is incapable of
> > sincerety.
>
> Actually, in the scene in Chapter 3 Hector is the one giving Zoyd all the
> information, not vice versa. And he isn't asking Zoyd to do *anything* at
> all; he wants to give him money for doing *nothing*.


Hector wants Zoyd to be a tripwire to help him find Frenesi. He's
asking--not explicitly right now, true, but it's the point of his visit--for
another betrayal.


> >> Hector's point is that dobbing in the occasional dope dealer for cash
isn't
> >> nearly as big a sell-out as Zoyd makes it out to be, especially in
> >> comparison with the other deals and compromises Zoyd has made along the
> > way.
> >> Zoyd's priorities and sense of morality are askew; he doesn't realise
or
> >> want to accept what he has turned into.
> >
> > You're not agreeing with Hector that he *has* a point, are you?
>
> Sure. As I wrote yesterday:
>
> Right up front we get Hector's baseline judgement of Zoyd's character:
>
>     Not that he credited Zoyd with anything like moral integrity
>     in resisting him. He put it down instead to stubbornness, plus
>     drug abuse, ongoing mental problems, and a timidity, maybe only
>     a lack of imagination, about the scale of any deal in life, drug
>     or nondrug. (22.5)
>
> It's not necessarily a reliable assessment, but it's not totally
> discountable either, and that last observation seems especially
insightful.


Hector doesn't credit Zoyd with integrity because the concept is completely
foreign to his experience. He's probably right about the stubbornness, drug
abuse, mental problems, timiidity, and lack of imagination, but he's blind
to the possibility that somebody might decline to participate in one of his
schemes because of basic human decency.

>
> > Zoyd made
> > one deal with the government, under extreme duress. That doesn't make
him a
> > moral defective.
>
> Not sure who you're arguing against here.


With your campaign to portray Zoyd as a character with a deep moral flaw,
which began with the pigeons on page 3. I can't find it in the book.


>
> > To the contrary, I take his longterm rejection of Hector's
> > blandishments as evidence that his moral compass is working fine.
>
> Trouble with this is, Zoyd hasn't "rejected" Hector at all. He keeps
comin'
> back, has kept up his part of the "romance" (22.1) every single time. He
> just hasn't taken any money from Hector -- which is Zoyd's idea of
> "virginity" (12.32) in respect to their relationship, even if it's only
> "technically" true (12.26, 12.32).


It is Hector, not Zoyd, who keeps coming back. Zoyd is Tweety, the "chasee,"
and it's clear he'd be pleased if he never had to deal with Hector again.
(Is "one of those gotta-shit throbs of fear" (10) a common response to
meeting an old friend?) At the end of Chapter 1 we see that Zoyd is being
worn down--"Zoyd knew that one day, just to have some peace, he'd say forget
it, and go over" (12)--but he never does. His relationship with Hector is
complicated and conflicted. I think Zoyd's state of technical virginity has
to do with the accommodation he's made to keep Hector relatively calm and
off his case. The only time we see Zoyd actually give Hector any
information, after being framed with a multi-ton monolith of reefer, it's
useless (302-303) and Zoyd knows it is, although Hector pretends it's not.

>
> >> The
> >> question begged here is whether there are any real distinctions between
the
> >> way the Mafia operates and the way Zoyd and his cronies operated.
> >
> > I'm completely baffled by this assertion. The distinctions are vivid and
> > polar.
>
> The connection is made in the text (27.1-22), the Wayvone wedding is a
Mafia
> gig, and Zoyd's in thick with Ralph Jnr (10-11). Drug dealing and
snitches;
> the Witness Protection program; ODs, carpark arguments leading to murder,
> contracts, and life "on the run" (29.4-7).


That would be Hector's take on Zoyd's friends. The fundamental difference is
that the people who lived on Gordita Beach were victims either of their own
bad habits or somebody else's malice, while the Mafia, like Hector and
Brock, is in the business of making trouble for other people.

D.C.





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