VL & the Work of mourning

[Terrance]

> 
> Zoyd in general just seems to have a skewed sense of work, no?  

Well, work ain't what used to be. 

And that is truly something to mourn. 

Le PLay once asked, what was the most important thing to come out of the
mine. 
Was it Gold? Silver? No! The miner was the most important thing to come
out of the mine. 


It's kinda important that it's been  high times for the STIFFS in the
woods though not for THOSE in the mills.  

And, that everybody knows it. 

Zoyd knows it. He  knows that there has been some kind of change of
consciousness (as Buster calls it, attributing this change to the
influence of Lucas) and that a new economic and legal system is
replacing the old one.  

So, Hal, it's not just a matter of the rich greedy big businessman or
corporation getting richer as the poor get poorer. Some working stiffs
are getting rich while others are getting poor. 


Zoyd knows that in America the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
He understand the impact this economic fact has on his life. However, he
is about to find out just how far out the impact of a new economic and
legal system can reach and what happens when when some working stiffs
get rich while others get poor. 


He plans to take an elegant looking imported little chain saw into the
Log Jam where badass hombres who spend all day narrowly escaping death
by tree have little if any patience for anything out of the ordinary. 

Sly, who happens to work at the Breez-Thru gas satiation and has seen it
all, knows what Zoyd will find up there. 




He mentions
> the need for money for groceries, yet his primary source of income is a
> once-a-year media stunt.  As you say, his notion of helping Isaiah Two-Four
> get "into business" is a one-time-only gig.

I don't think the checks are his primary source of income. Zoyd has lots
of jobs, businesses. 

Zoyd, like I-24, is a musician. He knows what he's doing. The boys may
very well end up with a regular gig at the Cuke. Right? 

But we should keep an eye on any and all business deals and jobs. For
example, later, DL will wonder if, how, why, she has been set up. 


> 
> For Zoyd, "work" doesn't seem to mean "employment" (and all that comes with
> it, including salary, benefits, etc.)  "Work" for Zoyd merely seems to
> equate an activity with receiving monetary compensation.

Zoyd is an example of the working class poor. 

> 
> >From the final paragraph of Chapter 2, it doesn't sound as if Zoyd is trying
> to "set-up" I-24 out of any deep malice, does it?  Playing a "crime-family
> gig" was "nothing the kid couldn't handle," and although Zoyd is "not 100
> percent crazy" (ironic!) about I-24, the gig more or less functions to get
> the kid off his back and out the door.  Smoke a joint and return to the TV
> set, eh?
> 
> Terrance, why "mourning"?

You might want to read Hollander on that first. Several critics have
identified and discussed the role of ghosts and haunting and trauma in
VL. 

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0307&msg=83308&sort=author

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0307&msg=83303&sort=author


  WOMEN AND TIMBER

  The Pacific Northwest Logging Community, 1920 - 1998

  This project pursued the forgotten histories of the mothers, wives,
  sisters, and daughters of Pacific  Northwest loggers from 1920 to
1997,
  primarily through oral history interviews.

  http://www.ccrh.org/oral/women&timber/




  Robert E. Walls 

  Lady Loggers and Gyppo Wives: Women and Northwest Logging, by Robert
E.
  Walls

  For the first eighty years of the twentieth century, the timber
industry
  fueled the economy of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The historical
  record from that period of lumbering and manufacturing, both written
and
  visual, generally portrays a world of men boldly “taming the
  timberbeast.” Recently, historians have begun to draw attention to the
  presence of women in timber communities and the significance of their
  work. In this
  photo essay, Robert Walls focuses on women’s roles in smaller,
  independent gyppo logging operations  from the 1940s through today.
  Through period photographs, oral history, and written records, Walls
  uncovers the history of women who worked alongside the men at a
variety
  of jobs in the woods, the lumber camps, and the mills.
                       



   http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa145.htm