VLVL 3 Zoyd & Hector

[jbor]

>>> 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


on 10/8/03 11:07 PM, Otto at ottosell at yahoo.de wrote:

> 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.

Zoyd is talking about the US under Republican govts c. 1971-1984 (1969
actually, but Zoyd is pretty apolitical in reality). You're referring, I
think, to protests against a Democrat government which had upped US
involvement in what by then was becoming an unpopular war in Vietnam.

I don't agree with you that the text portrays Zoyd as having "no choice" in
1984. I don't agree with you that the text presents the deal between Zoyd
and Brock as "Orwellian" or that it is anything like the torture and
brainwashing carried out on Winston Smith in Room 101 in _1984_. And I don't
agree with you that Hector is ever presented as a "human rat" in the novel.
Quote some text and we can discuss it, but so far what we have seen is Zoyd
struggling to ignore what his own conscience is trying to tell him, putting
on a show of bravado and "attitude" (26.2) but in reality being quite
content to meet up with Hector, and other characters reminding him
constantly that he is on "governmental business" (8.17). In Chapter 3 we've
seen evidence of Zoyd's complicity in the snitch culture, beginning back in
the mid-60s, we've seen Hector's act of "kindness" (27.17) in warning Zoyd
about what was about to happen to Frenesi, and we've also seen that the
whole deal with Zoyd's crazy act, the media circus, and the connections with
both Hector and Ralph Wayvone, have been orchestrated by Van Meter, who is
Zoyd's "partner" (8.21).

It's all there in the text.

best


> 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.