What VL is "about" (was Re: VLVL 4: War, politics and love)

[Tim Strzechowski]

Terrance, you're an outstanding and perceptive reader, and I have been
following your position on WORK in this novel very carefully.  And I do not
discount the fact that, as you continue to demonstrate and support,
_Vineland_ compellingly addresses the notions of work, employment, labor,
etc. throughout this novel.  Please continue to do so, because I find the
whole "reading" of it quite interesting.

But you are also perceptive enough to recognize that *no* work of literature
can be reduced to a simple sentence.  I, for one, find the notions of missed
communication throughout this novel just as important to understanding what
it's "about," especially given the "failure" of what the 60's
counter-culture promised as solutions to social problems.  For example, this
novel opens with a dream in which the protagonist dreams of missing the
messages of carrier pigeons because "he could never quite get to [them] in
time" (3), and his daughter leaves him a note about her shift change because
she couldn't wake him up.  He misses the notification that his window jump
location has been changed, and he only realizes after-the-fact that the
window itself is fake. Later, he playfully misleads his daughter's boyfriend
into getting a band gig for a crime-family. The Hector and Van Meter
exchange (23), the seeming inability of Hector to make Zoyd "see" the
"reality" of his past and present circumstances (during their meal), and Dr.
Deeply's just missing Hector (33) are additional examples of missed
communication.  Even in the present chapter, we see the following:

What mattered at the moment was that he knew how to visit Frenesi out in the
night, and that could only mean he must feel a need for her as intense as
Prairie's own.  "Where's it you go, then?  Where is she?"

"Keep tryin' to find out.  Try to read signs, locate landmarks, anything
that'll give a clue, but -- well the signs are there on street corners and
store windows -- but I can't read them."

"It's some other language."

"Nope, it's in English, but there's something between it and my brain that
won't let it through." (40).

In a novel that so carefully addresses the similarities and differences
between two different political eras, and likewise addresses the ways in
which these two eras perceive each other and its achievements and failures,
as well as how it communicates its own superiority over the other era, I
find the notion of "missed communication" in this novel just as compelling
as the notion of "labor" and how it is perceived by various characters.

Is that to say _Vineland_ is "about" missed communication and more than it
is "about" WORK?  Of course not.  It's one of the *many* facets of this
literary work that makes it enjoyable to examine.  Literature is funny that
way, no?

Respectfully,

Tim



From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>

> I guess if we ignore the text we can say Vineland is about anything we
> want.
>


Obviously, I *haven't* ignored the text.