VLVL2 (1): Narrator's Voice

[Toby G Levy]

The one thing that leapt out at me after I read the introduction to Pale
Fire one day and the first section of Vineland the next  day was the
vocabulary levels.  As with GR and M&D, I needed the dictionary at hand
as I read through the intro to PF.  Sure, most of the words were
decipherable through context, and some were halfway familiar, but reading
with the dictionary open for me adds another dimension of enjoyment to a
work of literature.  The startling thing to me was that there were NO
words that needed a dictionary in the opening section to Vineland.  I've
read the book at least a half a dozen times before and this never crossed
my mind, but I think this is where much of the disrespect that Vineland
gets from Pynchon fans comes from, the fact that any reasonably read
tenth grader could cruise through this novel.  

I found the narrator's voice in Vineland to be similar to that of the
narrator in Gravity's Rainbow, a warm caring person aghast at the events
he is describing.

I think the cries that "Pynchon has lost it!" that were heard after the
release of Vineland have to do with the vocabulary.  But it seems pretty
clear to me that Pynchon made a conscious choice to write in a more
vernacular tone.

Toby

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