VLVL2 (3): Fantasy Hand-Jobs

[Tim Strzechowski]

Chapter Three of Vineland gives us our first solid glimpse of anti-Sixties sentiment*, something which Pynchon will juxtapose with scenes that question the validity of Reagan-era politics as well later in the novel.

During the Hector and Zoyd exchange, the former states the following:

[...] "[I]t's no game in Washington --- chale ese --- this ain't tweakin' around no more with no short-term maneuvers here, this is a real revolution, not that little fantasy hand-job you people was into, is it's a groundswell, Zoyd, the wave of History, and you can catch it, or scratch it" (27).

Later, Hector responds to Zoyd's "fascist regimes" comment with:

"Caray, you sixties people, it's amazing.  Ah love ya!  Go anywhere, it don't matter -- hey, Mongolia!  Go way out into small-town Outer Mongolia, ese, there's gonna be some local person about your age come runnin up, two fingers in a V, hollerin, 'What's yer sign, man?' or singin 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' note for note. [...] Don't be disingenuous, I know you still believe in all that shit.  All o' you are still children inside, livin your real life back then.  Still waitin for that magic payoff [...]" (28).

For as much as we must remember that Pynchon essentially chalks up everything Hector says in this chapter to the statements of "some sort of escaped lunatic" getting Tubal therapy from N.E.V.E.R. (33-4), Hector gives us a thumbnail sketch of the Reagan-era assessment of the revolutionary spirit of the Sixties and, in many ways, this is also what one might say Vineland is "about": 

Were the Sixties (in terms of its counter-culture, its revolution(s), etc.) a "failure"?  

Also to consider:

For Hector, what makes it a failure?

Does Pynchon's characterization of Zoyd (as Pynchonian "schlemiel") support that assessment of the Sixties?

Is it safe to conclude that Hector is the "voice" of Reagan-era "reality"?  Or is Hector merely the Eighties mindset at its most cynical?


Obviously, Pynchon's use of the Tube-as-Drug is a key to understanding which position he might be leaning toward as the novel unfolds.

Tim


*  One might argue that anti-Sixties sentiment is suggested in Zoyd's encounter with Isaiah Two-Four in the previous chapter (cf. pg. 18), but Chapter Three is the first time we hear a character (Hector) offer a sound argument against the sensibilities and mindset of the Sixties counter-culture movement.


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