VLVL 4: War, politics and love

[jbor]

>> Which I guess puts quite a different spin on why they might've actively
>> "erased" their "trail since the war" (35.25-7). It now seems likely to me
>> that RC and Moonpie were ashamed of the fact that he had served in
> Vietnam,
>> and had changed their names and tried to start life afresh when he
> returned
>> with the rest of the US troops in January 1973 after the Paris Peace
> Accords
>> were signed. So, more deceit, another sellout story.

on 28/8/03 10:23 PM, Otto wrote:

> I don't buy that. Official America hasn't been very nice to the
> Nam-Veterans, so after their return many of them joined the counterculture
> (let their hair grow long) where they were greeted friendly. The anti-war
> movement wasn't hostile to the single soldier but to the government that had
> sent the poor guys into the Vietnam-quagmire.
> 
> It's more likely that RC had deserted from the troops. That would be a good
> reason for a name-change.

Then he wouldn't be labelled a "bush vet" (and I agree with Don that "bush"
is probably short for "ambush" rather than a description of hinterland
country, which is more an Australian denotation of "bush" and which had kept
tripping me up). And the name change and covering of their tracks wouldn't
have occurred "since the war" but "since he went AWOL".

Arguments about the Vietnam War aside (and I probably agree with most of
what you say on the subject above), I'm interested in what's going on in
Pynchon's text. I think you can read this detail about RC and Moonpie as a
sellout in one of two ways. Either RC sold out on the '60s by going to fight
in Vietnam and not becoming a conscientious objector like many of the
anti-War counter-culture boys did, or he sells out on the rest of the troops
he fought beside by returning and changing his name and trying to hide the
fact that he *was* a soldier in Vietnam. The point remains that RC and
Moonpie *have* changed their names and "erased" their "trail" since the war.
One way or another they are trying to cover up their identities, their past;
they are ashamed of what RC had been. It's the way Pynchon depicts their
consciousness of having sold out -- either way -- which is interesting in a
thematic sense.

I don't buy Terrance's claim that "WORK" is the only theme in the novel. I
think there are many themes and details in the book worth discussing. I do
think the later labour stuff from the '30s and the Hollywood blacklist era
is interesting, but I think that the description of characters' work in
these early chapters is a pretty standard way of introducing them, and that
it's used by Pynchon structurally to get characters from one meeting to
another and to introduce a range of locales.

Another interesting thing in this chapter is the way that just about
everyone seems to be busy snitching on everyone else. Van Meter manages to
locate Zoyd yet again, even though he's almost hiding; everywhere Zoyd goes
people jump for the phone to dob him in to Brock Vond (it's not just his
paranoia); Zoyd calls Doc Deeply to come and recapture Hector; and then at
the pizza joint Doc Deeply comes in and high-fives and thanks the owner,
Baba Havabanada. (Which, by the way, is another really dumb name.)

best