VLVL 3 Zoyd & Hector

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2003 12:36 AM
Subject: Re: VLVL 3 Zoyd & Hector


> on 9/8/03 9:27 AM, jbor at jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
>
> > So far, the description of Republican government in the US as a "fascist
> > regime" (28.10) is Zoyd's hyperbole only.
>
> Cf. the Burket essay Terrance posted earlier:
>
>     Zoyd uses words like "fascist" to describe the government, but
>     he does not bother to challenge it or try to resist it; he simply
>     evades it as much as possible. Not to mention the fact that, despite
>     his protest to the contrary, he has not really avoided becoming an
>     agent of the State law enforcement apparatus: his "defenestration"
>     performance, paid for with his disability check, shows him really
>     to be working for the State whether he admits it or not.
>
> http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/burket24.htm#1
>
> best
>

America -- love it or leave it.

That 'hyperbole' (if it is one) was the common conviction among the
hippies/yippies coming to Chicago on August 29, 1968. And the way the
nonconformist young Americans have been treated in the late
sixties/seventies showed a dangerous track America was -- and is still --
on. As Burket says about the "war on drugs:"

"In Vineland, the effectiveness of the State in foreclosing resistance to
the law as a viable possibility is made more effective by the fact that in
the "War on Drugs," as in McCarthy's Red hunting, to which it is paralleled
in the novel, evidence of "crimes" is easily manufactured to create the
crimes, the commission of which can then be used to justify the arrest of
anyone whom the agent of the law wishes to arrest, as in the planting of a
monstrous block of marijuana in Zoyd's house (a block so big that it cannot
even fit through the doors). But the "War on Drugs" has an added advantage
over McCarthy because it is effectively depoliticized. There can be no
organized resistance or appeals to law by "druggies," unlike leftists,
because drugs, as inanimate objects, are an easy "evil" to construct, not to
mention lacking in constitutional protections, unlike political beliefs and
speech. But Pynchon understands these two "wars" to be fundamentally the
same. The "War on Drugs" evolves out of, and is an extension of, the
crackdown on radicals in the 1960s (which in turn is an extension of similar
practices in the 1930s) because it is an easier "war" to wage; drug users
are an easier and more pervasive "Other" to create and demonize. It is
easier to produce generalized sentiments of hostility toward the "criminal"
than the political dissident, and thus to produce affirmative sentiments
toward law enforcement and consent for its escalating use of force to fight
this "war." (...) The "War on Drugs," is still in full swing."
http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/burket24.htm

"There can be no organized resistance (...)."

So how could Zoyd challenge or resist the state? Only way to get out of all
this would have been to move to Canada or Mexico like a draft resister. The
dilemma Brock puts him in if he wants to stay free and keep his child is the
heart of the novel. As I've said before the deal between BV and Zoyd is
orwellian, it's Zoyd's "Room 101." Zoyd has no choice. BV and Hector may be
very different in detail (BV has got much more power) but basically they're
both presented as human rats, even if Hector regains his humanity in the
course of the novel. His claim "It's a free country" is as ridiculous as
Zoyd's window jump.

Otto