VLVL2 work

[jbor]

on 17/7/03 1:28 PM, Tim Strzechowski at dedalus204 at comcast.net wrote:

>> The idea that he is (or that Pynchon is) consciously decking himself out
> as
>> a demented housewife, is condescending and chauvinistic, in my opinion.
> 
> Maybe.  For this reader, it merely has a Corporal Klinger quality to it.
> The quintessential insane-plea via a Section-8: soldier boy dressing like a
> woman.  Plus, as I've mentioned before, the classic "guy in drag" gag has
> its roots in the Ancients and Elizabethans.  It's classic farce.

Yes, I agree that Max Klinger from M*A*S*H* might have been Zoyd's model,
and I also believe that it's a demented drag queen act rather than a
demented housewife act, as I noted in my initial post on this thread.

The other thing to consider is the self-referentiality of all of this. How
much of what Pynchon himself does could be considered "work"? Is the
publication of a new novel (him jumping through the window of a text in drag
as he had done with Oedipa Maas in 1966, perhaps) something which he is
compelled to do (by the Ford Foundation Grant people or by his publishers)
to keep the cheques rolling in? Is there an ironic self-consciousness of his
own ambivalent relationship with the culture and the government in his
portrayal of Zoyd's (dishonest) way of earning a living?

best