VLVL2(3): Who Was Saved?

[Dave Monroe]

   "I won't aks you to grow up, but just sometime,
please, aks yourself, OK, 'Who was saved?'  That's
all, rill easy, 'Who was saved?'" (VL, Ch. 3, pp.
38-9)

Cf. ...

   "Carefully also, Frenesi raised her eyes to those
of her friend.  'Looks like those Pisks were right,'
her voice so sad that DL couldn't answer.  'Feels like
we were running around like little kids with toy
weapons, like the camera really was some kind of gun,
gave us that kind of power.  Shit.  How could we lose
track like that, about what was real?  All that time
we made ourselves stay on the natch? might as well
have been dropping Purple Owsley for all the good it
did.'  She shook her head, looked down at her knees. 
'And it wasn't only Weed who got offed, story going
around the camp is thee were others, and the FBI
covered it up?  So what difference did we make?  Who'd
we save?  The minute the guns came out, all that
art-of-the-cinema handjob was over.'" (VL, Ch. 12, p.
259)

>From David Thoreen, "The Economy of Consumption: The
Entropy of Leisure in Pynchon's Vineland," Pynchon
Notes 30-31 (Spring-Fall 1992): 53-62 ...

   "Given the entropy of leisure, then, Vineland can
be seen as a systematic illustration that Marx's
reasoning was, as Arendt proclaims, fallacious.  No
matter how much leisure they secure, the chracters in
ineland never do get around to Marx's 'higher'
activities.[...]  The consolidation of information and
the consolidation resources in the consumer society
are additional indicators of increasing entropy in the
consumption economy.  If this is our brave new world,
we may well ask whether a revolutionary stance is
still possible--a question phrased by Hector, and
later Frenesi, as 'Who was saved?' (29, 259)." (pp. 58-9)

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