VLVL2 (1) Missed Communications: Beginnings

[jbor]

on 22/7/03 1:29 PM, Don Corathers wrote:

> I think we're going to have to agree to a friendly disagreement on this one.
> 
> "He understood it to be another deep nudge from forces unseen, almost surely
> connected with the letter that had come with his latest mental-disability
> check..."
> 
> (That "another" in there is interesting, but we'll let that pass for now.)

It is indeed. I'll just clarify what my reading is. I think that Zoyd
understood the message he *missed* in the dream to be connected with the
letter he received. He doesn't know what the message is, or he doesn't
*want* to know. It's something which has been nagging away at him for a
while ("another"), but he hasn't yet been able to bring it to the surface of
consciousness, or else some vestige of self-respect or ego defence mechanism
has actively prevented him from doing this. Everything else he does on the
day *is* off the mark, but it's *because* he hasn't paid attention to what
his conscience is trying to tell him that things keep going awry. He misses
all the signs which keep presenting themselves, and the signs are as much
about who he is, what he has become, as they are about where he should be
and what he should be doing.

Yes, I think he's a welfare cheat. He *is* a welfare cheat. But I also think
he has been a good father and is a genuinely good guy, and that the
ultimatum presented to him by Brock *forced* him into this predicament (and
was perhaps *intended* to do so), and have noted that he's presented as a
sympathetic character, that we are meant to like him, and that he's in the
same mould as Benny P. and Slothrop (don't forget that Slothrop *works*,
when we first meet him at least, for the US Army.) I just see an extra
psychological dimension to his character in this opening chapter, a gradual
awakening, one which has perhaps been trying to manifest itself against his
conscious will, to the sort of person he got turned into when he signed that
"deal with the devil".

As to the television thing, I think there's an ambivalence there as well,
and the 1995 Mark Robberds essay in _Critique_ which Tim posted extracts
from, and which I hadn't seen before, had some excellent insights. As well
as all the negative stuff, which I think you're right about, in the novel
the act of TV viewing does provide a venue where families and friends get
together, where they can touch base, share their experiences and opinions,
engage with one another at a personal level, and the programs themselves
provide common ground, as well as a common language at times, which
strengthens interpersonal relationships and bridges across cultures,
generations, genders, ideological divides. There are many examples of this
in the novel, the first of which is in the second chapter as Prairie and her
dad watch the news footage of Zoyd's stunt. Crap tv is not all good, but
it's not all bad either.

And it's pretty clear that the tv references, imagery and parodies in the
novel have been composed and incorporated by someone who has viewed all of
these programs and who is quite familiar with them, and there's often a real
sense of exuberance and pleasure about the way they have been represented in
and incorporated into the text.

best


> Your argument seems to be based on the fact that Zoyd "understood" the dream
> to be "almost surely connected" with the requirement that he do something
> "publicly crazy." Yet everything else he understood that day was wrong--the
> location for his performance, that the Log Jam was a rustic logger's bar,
> that he could change the act if he wanted to, that Hector Zuniga was out of
> his life for good, that he was jumping through a real piece of glass, that
> there was no risk, if the glass were real., of getting hurt. He was wrong
> about all of these things. Why should we assume he was right about the
> pigeons?
> 
> None of this really matters much except as it reflects on Zoyd as a
> character. You think he's a welfare cheat who should be ashamed of his
> behavior. I think he's a mensch (and also a schlemihl in the Slothrop mold).
> He's been a good father to Prairie, and his willingness to make an ass of
> himself once a year is a part of that. And his dog likes him. That's good
> enough for me.
> 
> D.C.
> 
> 
>> There are several other points which support the reading of those "forces
>> unseen" in the opening dream sequence as prompts from Zoyd's own
>> subconscious or conscience. One is that the later assault by the Feds on
>> Zoyd's house isn't really "connected" (3) with the letter he received from
>> the Welfare Dept, whereas his yearly act of deception is. Another is that
>> the narrator preempts events to come quite deliberately in this chapter --
>> "He sure would ... " (5) and "Dream on, Zoyd" (10) being two prominent
>> examples -- so it would be inconsistent in the way narrative agency is
>> articulated in the rest of the chapter to use Zoyd's dream as premonitory in
>> the manner suggested. Finally, one of the stock criticisms of Pynchon's
>> writing is the flatness of his characters. I dispute this: sure there are a
>> lot of cartoonish minor characters, but I think that there is real
>> psychological depth to many of the characters in _GR_, and to some of the
>> main characters in _Vineland_ as well. I get a real sense in the 'Sloth'
>> article, with his sarcastic comments on writer's block and the way writers
>> are perceived as slothful particularly, that he was somewhat annoyed by some
>> of the reviews and critical receptions of _Vineland_, and that he also used
>> this article as a venue to display the depth of his research. I think one of
>> the criticisms which is levelled at him most often, and one which is perhaps
>> quite unfair, is that his characters are cartoons.