VLVL2 work

[jbor]

>>> Zoyd's (dishonest) way of earning a living?
>> 
>> I doubt Pynchon would characterize it as "dishonest."
> 
> It's dishonest to collect Disability Insurance if you are not disabled.

Yes, that's the way I see it, and I think that's the way Zoyd's starting to
see it too. Though he seems to have had no conscience about it in the past,
and though it is presented comically, there are enough hints in the first
chapter that Zoyd is conscious of the fact that he is perpetrating a
deception. He admits he had been "planning" (3.31) his new act for weeks
(which seems to be at odds with other comments and observations he makes
that it has been more of a spur of the moment thing). He dresses up and rats
his hair and stubble or beard into what he "hoped would register as
insane-looking enough" (4.22) to satisfy the mental health authorities. And,
later, after the window-jump he complies with what the media crews expect of
him, "obligingly charging at each of the news cameras while making insane
faces" (12.3), without hesitation.

I think there is evidence enough that he is beginning to feel a little bit
guilty about it all. The message that the carrier pigeons bring in the dream
could be a "deep nudge" (3) from his *own* conscience, something which he
really has had to work hard not to hear in his conscious brain. He's
irritable about the whole thing, has put it off (even though he'd apparently
been planning "for weeks"), telling Slide that "[t]his year it snuck up on
me" and even worrying that he's "gettin' too old" for it (4). Perhaps the
decision to change his M.O. was prompted by his feelings of guilt too. And,
there's a bit of hedging and potential uncertainty in that "technically"
when at chapter's end he reminds himself that "he had hung on to his
virginity". He's not so sure.

And external circumstances and remarks seem to contribute to his misgivings.
There's the scene with Lemay in the logger's bar, where Buster has to
intervene to protect Zoyd and makes the comment about him being on
"governmental business" and Lemay immediately thinks he's an "[u]ndercover
agent". Zoyd's quick to rebut that suggestion. And then there's the fact
that the window pane had been replaced, unbeknownst to him, with sugar
glass, his realisation that "something was funny" (11). All through the
sequence Zoyd's out of sorts, not in control of things as he thinks he is;
on the one hand he's just going through the motions and doing what's
expected but on the other hand he's beginning to recognise that he hasn't
got a handle on this situation the way he once had, or that he'd like to
have. The times they are a-changing. Early in the chapter, after he lies
about the dress being a "Calvin Klein original", the "girl younger than his
daughter" tells him he should be "locked up" (5), and it's not made clear
whether she means as a criminal or as a nutcase. With this girl (and with
Justin later on) there's a sense of a new generation with a whole new set of
attitudes coming through. In fact, this is one of the things which strikes
me most about _Vineland_, a distinct sense of generational change.

Buster's comment that he and Zoyd played together in "the old Six Rivers
Conference" (7.1) is a sports reference, isn't it? College baseball or
football?
    
best

> Work in VL is dishonest.
> 
> From Marxist Pigs and The Giving Tree.
> 
> What I am and what I can do is by no means determined by my
> individuality. 
> 
> I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman.
> 
> Which means to say that I am not ugly, for the effect of
> ugliness, its repelling power, is destroyed by money. As an individual,
> I am lame, but money procures me 24 legs. Consequently, I am not lame. I
> am a wicked, dishonest, unscrupulous and stupid individual, but money is
> respected, and so also is its owner.
> 
> Money is the highest good, and consequently its owner is also good.
> Moreover, money spares me the trouble of being dishonest, and I am
> therefore presumed to be honest.