VLVL2 work

[Paul Nightingale]

The mental-disability payments are part of Zoyd's deal with Brock Vond:
see their conversation after Zoyd has been busted (300-301) and Hector's
comments subsequently (304). Hence the annual stunt returns Zoyd to the
moment he sold out (if indeed that description fits). Far from
exploiting the benevolent welfare state, Zoyd knows he has been bought
off: the price he pays to keep his child.

None of this, of course, is known in Ch1, so it's plausible that a
reader might consider the possibility that Zoyd is indeed plagued by
guilt: he knows he doesn't 'deserve' the payments (ie his claim is
fraudulent). However, the text indicates that something about 'this
year' is different, so we would need to explain why Zoyd has chosen 1984
to start feeling guilty. Nothing in the text allows us to make that
reading; Zoyd has not been 'given' a guilty conscience.

The text does, however, prepare the reader (eg "another deep nudge from
forces unseen", "several rude updates") for something, and that turns
out to be the appearance of Hector, whom Zoyd seems to be expecting:
"Zoyd went sweaty and had one of those gotta-shit throbs of fear." This
moment and the proposed lunch-date is what drives the narrative forward,
and stops this occasion being just another window-jump.

The chapter as a whole is, perhaps, Pynchon's comic appropriation of one
of the most important shifts in political discourse in the 1980s, the
New Right's attempt to transform the role of the state. In the process,
benefit claimants were stigmatised, almost as a matter of course. I'm
not sure how, precisely, it worked in the States; others are better
qualified to comment. However, in Britain, the New Right emphasised the
need to prove entitlement, with the implicit assumption that 'anyone'
might be a sponger. Hence the claimant will perform eligibility. It
might be argued that this is only right and proper; one 'earns' benefit
by so performing, an act of labour for which one is paid a wage.
Nonetheless, in Britain, it was estimated that the amount of money
'saved' because people didn't apply for benefits to which they were
entitled far exceeded what was 'lost' to fraudulent claims ... all of
which corroborates the view that the New Right's goal, or one of them,
was educating people to expect less of the welfare state.