re. Re: VLVL Sentences

[Terrance]

lorentzen-nicklaus wrote:
> 
> > > By the way, I agree that the "VL is about WORK" mantra remains
> > > unsubstantiated.
> >
> 
> °°° Vineland is about conflicting efforts to reconstruct the 1960s as
> an imaginary object --
> 
> KFL +

Variations of this reading have been discussed here. 
An wonderful example, 

Cultural Trauma and the "Timeless Burst": Pynchon's revision of
Nostalgia in Vineland.
By James Berger 

I think Berger misreads one of the most important chapters in the novel.
His title, Timeless burst" is taken from that chapter. It example of the
propensity of Pynchon critics to ignore the text. 

Take a look. 

"[VL's] concern, rather, as it returns to the 1960s from the vantage of
the Reaganist
1980s, is with how cultural memory is transmitted, and it portrays the
ideological distortions, marketing strategies, and the variety of
nostalgias through
which Americans in the 1980s apprehended the 60s." 

OK. Sound cool. 

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/papers_berger.html

Pynchon also describes a utopian, communitarian, vision and energy as
having provided the basis for 60s radicalism, and then returning to
indicate a moral and political axis
for confronting neo-conservative and Reaganist politics of the 1980s.
Frenesi, in
the mid-60s, "dreamed of a mysterious people's oneness, drawing together
toward the best chances of light, achieved once or twice that she'd seen
in the
street, in short, timeless, bursts..." (117). The model for such a
community is
Frenesi's radical film collective, 24fps

Is that right? 

A model for community? No way! 

"These utopian moments, "timeless bursts" of light, liberation, and
possibility,
are the sites of Pynchon's revised nostalgia."

What did Frenzy really dream of? A utopia? Why does Berger cut off
Pynchon's text? There are no  ellipses in VL at page 117. 

The cops and the protesters are caught in an S&M ritual dance of death.
The blade and the people. As one astute reader noted, this is re-run of
much better stuff in GR. This is Pynchon's favorite idea, S&M. And, of
course, there are NO  models for Utopian community (again, read
Pynchon's TSI) in any Pynchon novel. 

Turn back to that chapter and we see that DL's meeting with Frenesi is
described in working terms, career paths they inherit from their
parents. They are no the children in TSI, but young adults. 

If we look at these meetings, "how and when did we meet" , they are
described as working relationships, business associations, career path
crossing (Adorno Rackets). 

VL is not about work. Obviously. 

VL is not about work.

 That's obvious enough. 

But work is what holds this novel together. 

Why? 


Thus far I've invited you all to look at work in VL from several
different angles. Pynchon's interest in work, in organized labor, in
Luddites, in Sloth, in strike and protest (Bartleby), in the work of
authors (I provided several examples from Derrida and of course Orwell's
1984 is about work and writing too), in work as slavery, in  bondage
bureaucracy  (S&M Faucault) and so on is not simply a novelist working
over the tried and true tired old stuff that authors have been writing
about for ever. 

Work, labor, organized labor and resistance, is a central theme in
Pynchon's fiction. It is there from the start. It is central to the
early stories. In the Small Rain, it is work,  Lardass's work collecting
the dead and his plowing of Little Buttercup (Love & Death) that holds
the story together. In TSI explores many of the same themes that VL
addresses, work, protest, organized resistance of the workers, vagrancy
and the post-war worker-artist, the destruction of modes of industrial
production, work and  the military industrial complex, work as property,
automation and human labor, and so on. In Lowlands Dennis walks away
from his job, wife, property (Thoreen has identified the Rip Van Winkle
in Pynchon's fiction). Anyway ... Recently, I posted some stuff
from Adorno that I think worth looking into. I've perused the novel and
I'm convinced that work is the glue that holds this novel together. 


How did we (DL and Takeshi) meet.  
Well! Through Ralph Wayvone. VL.130


In the Previous Chapter, DL meets Frenesi. 


In the chapter before that one, Prairie meets DL at Ralph Wayvones
(through Ralph Wayvone and Takeshi's business card-amulet). 

Prairie is going to meet Takeshi through DL. 

Were not sure when Takeshi met Zoyd or through whom because Zoyd seems
to know Takeshi already when they meet for what appears to be the the
very first time aboard the Kahuna Flight.  Zoyd says, "Is that you,
Takeshi?"  This implies that Zoyd knows the man or that the reel world
and the real world are connected. Well, when you've got a Japanese CEO
of Life & Un-Life, some sort of Run Shaw  Buddhist oneness of life and
death, and real and reel, is not unexpected. 

But what about Frenesi? What has she to do with all this? 
Well, DL wants to kill BV because she feels that BV took her girl and
other people from her. So she is disguised as Frenzy when she meets
Takeshi. 



So what all this got to do with Work. 

Turning back now to Prairie working off her tuition at the Sisterhood,
cooking, cleaning ... we see DL and Frenesi meet. 

They meet and on page 118 we see Moody in DL (middle paragraph). 

Moody: Ronder, skilled at criminal rough stuff, drinking, jail, small
arms and so on ... army, (118 bottom) and ships off (119). 


"It was the first time in his career he couldn't climb in the truck and
head for some borderline." His career. It's his job. So on. The chapter
is saturated with work. As is the entire novel.