VLVL2 Zoyd's work

[Don Corathers]

Not to beat a dead horse, but...


jbor:

> on 27/7/03 12:37 PM, Don Corathers wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure you can say that the disability check is his main source of
> > income. (We actually have no idea how much the monthly payment is, but
it's
> > probably pretty small.)
>
> I'm not sure you can say it isn't, either. It'd be his only *regular*
source
> of income, certainly.
>

>From p 319:

"By that time [not long after his arrival in Vineland] Zoyd... was starting
to put together a full day's work, piece by piece."


> As he and Prairie discuss household finances and the danger quotient of
his
> annual act Zoyd asks himself:
>
>     How, then, unless he could count on sugar windows from
>     here on in, could he expect to bring in any more revenue
>     this way? Heck -- he should have been working for a Joey
>     Chitwood-type thrill show all this time and making some
>     real money. (17.4)
>
> It's another moment where he's starting to have second thoughts about what
> he's been doing all this time, and his reservations actually go a bit
deeper
> than the "sugar window" issue I think.

Purely speculative.


I also think this is a pretty clear
> indication that the disability cheques have been the main source of
income.
>

The fact is that if you're operating a household at poverty-level income,
the loss of any part of it, even as little as ten percent, is a serious
problem.

> And the fact that he's got extra income coming in from all these other
> *incidental* cash jobs only emphasises the fact that he has been and is a
> welfare cheat.
>

As others have pointed out, if Zoyd is a "welfare cheat," it is because an
agent of the federal government ordered him to be one. For him to stop
collecting disability payments would be a breach of his deal, with attendant
consequences. From p. 304:

" 'But you can't really disappear,' Sasha said.

"Right--which is where the mental-disability arrangement came in. 'Just a
way for us to know where you are,' Hector had explained, 'long as you're
pickin up those checks, nobody'll bother you--but if you stop for even one
time, the alarm goes off and we know you're tryin to skip.' "

Recall that this part of the thread grew out of the assertion that Zoyd's
opening scene dream had to do with misgivings about the dishonesty of his
mental disability claim. I didn't see any evidence for that and suggested
that the dream was a premonition of the shitstorm that was about to come
down.

When Zoyd does encounter Hector--the first tangible manifestation of the
trouble that's headed his way--the meeting is described this way (p 10):

"Sure enough, it turned out to be Hector Zuniga, back once again, the
erratic federal comet who brought, each visit to Zoyd's orbit, new forms of
bad luck and baleful influence. This time, though, it had been a while, long
enough that Zoyd had begun to hope that the man might have found other meat
and be gone for good. Dream on, Zoyd."

Would you agree, jbor, that a reasonable reading of that narrative
interjection "Dream on, Zoyd" would be to connect it to the dream Zoyd was
having seven pages earlier?

D.C.



> The other point to make is that Zoyd here describes the receipt of welfare
> cheques as "revenue", and the alternative, performing a paid stunt act in
a
> "thrill show", as "working". I'd say he seems to have a fairly grounded
> concept of what "work" actually is.
>
> best
>
>