VLVL 4: War, politics and love

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> RC, like Blood, seems to be a Vietnam vet:
> 
>        RC and Moonpie, real names left back along their by now
>     erased-enough trail since the war ... (35.25)

Maybe. Maybe not. 


RC and Moonpie, real names left back along their by now erased-enough
trail since the war, were as happy to see the money as the kids were to
be out doing the work--Morning the biggest splashing down the middle of
the creek, with the others carrying jars and sacks of twenty-penny
nails, and fastening a piece of bacon to the bottom of every knee-deep
pool they came to. 



That bit on their real names between the commas (, real names left back
along their by now erased-enough trail since the war,) makes the
sentence a bit difficult to digest. But once down the hatch I start
wondering why they had to erase their trail and change their names. And
why they named themselves RC and Moonpie? Or if someone else named them?
The song? Maybe. Another Irregular couple? How so?  The history of the
Moonpie and RC? Hard to say. But if my ridiculous assertion that VL is
about Work isn't simply ridiculous perhaps there is something in the
combined stories of the Moonpie and RC Cola. I'll let you know if I can
bake something up worth drinking about. 

Anyway, why did they erase their trail and change their names? 

Maybe their old names were not good for business. And maybe the new ones
are. 


Nails! That's a cool name. 

In California framing, being as they have earthquakes and other stuff,
they use real big spikes. 

http://www.cwc.ca/products/connections/nails_and_screws/nail_types.html

Zoyd' sideline in crawfish is a bit irregular. Or is it?  He's coupling
these off the grid farmers with chic restaurants that cater to Yuppies
who probably work for the Military Industrial Complex or in inorganic
polymers being mainlined into the vein of a Eureka-Crescent
City--Vineland megalopolis augmenting the already oversized tits of the
System he sucks on for his and Prairie's sustenance. Speaking of which,
Zoyd hands his maybe-still-a-virgin daughter over to meat hooks I-24.
The guy Zoyd, notorious scrounge and cheapskate accused of being too
cheap to feed his daughter. 





> 
>     ... RC emerged from the can, with the deep eyes, the mortally
>     cautious bearing, that told of where else he'd been. (36.14)

Maybe he's been in the CAN. As in prison. 


> 
> NB also 38.18-20, reiterating Pynchon's antagonism towards *American*
> politics (i.e. Democrat *and* Republican) and warmaking, and racism towards
> African-Americans.


> 
> Zoyd really does miss Frenesi and wants to know where she is and how she's
> doing (pp. 39-40), despite the show he put on for Hector in the previous
> chapter. And note also how Zoyd defends Hector to Moonpie:
> 
>        "Rill unhappy dude, is all." (41.14)
> 
> And Moonpie's response to this.

Double stuff. Hector is a real unhappy dude too. 


> 
> Interestingly, when Blood and Vato speak, they address themselves (eg. 45.2
> and 45.11). It's rather odd, and I don't think it quite works as a speech
> mannerism. But Pynchon seems to have put some effort into coming up with
> these accents and verbal tics: the use, by Zoyd primarily, but other
> characters as well, of "didt'n"; Hector's accented participles etc. As a
> device of characterisation it does makes them sound a bit cartoonish,
> perhaps the opposite of what Pynchon was intending.

I think he intends to pull off the chip & dale and other TV/cartoon/film
stuff and get the flavor of the california speak too. He mixes it up.
Difficult to read at times, because the cartoon or TV stuff mixes in and
out sometimes without any clues that the channels have been zapped.