VLVL2 Zoyd's work

[Paul Nightingale]

Don makes a good case for Zoyd-as-worker.

Furthermore, the problem with labelling Zoyd a welfare cheat is that it
does ignore what Pynchon has actually written, on p3: the letter reminds
Zoyd that he has to do something publicly crazy to remain eligible for
benefit. He doesn't need certification from a doctor; he has to perform,
in public.

I suppose it might be argued that the wording of the letter is
different; and what we read is a conventional bureaucratic message
filtered through the consciousness of a cheat who's quite cynical about
ends and means. But if we're going to opt for (and somehow justify) this
particular reading, we still have to deal with the oddity of the public
display. Given that this is set up on the first page, and features
prominently throughout Ch1 and the opening section of Ch2, the reader
should be alert to the way the novel creates a fictional world in which
the rules are different.

Admittedly, the realist might go on to argue that, whereas the deal Zoyd
strikes with Brock and Hector does away with the need for proper
certification, this doesn't override the basic fact that he is claiming
benefit to which he isn't, not really, entitled. And so, consequently,
when all is said and done, that does make him, inevitably, much as it
pains us to admit it, a welfare cheat.

Two brief points here. Firstly, this still doesn't address the fact of
the public performance, and how the window-jumping display fits in with
the rest of the novel. Ch2, for example, sees Zoyd and Prairie
performing, rehearsing a range of options open to them as
father-daughter: performance here is related to the power relations that
obtain in the traditional (ie patriarchal) family (as championed in the
1980s by the New Right).

Secondly - and I don't want to jump ahead too far, but we've already
mentioned the deal with Brock and Hector. Zoyd has to disappear to keep
him away from Frenesi (as Brock insists, pp300-301). What if he then
becomes a minor TV celebrity? Surely, if we're pursuing a realist line,
common sense tells us she 'might' see him on TV (indeed, Zoyd fantasises
about this, in different circumstances, p36).

Another reminder that the novel does construct a fictional world, one in
which we have to be wary of the real-life (even commonsense) assumptions
we bring to our reading.