VLVL2 (9): Porush and the Puncutron Machine (part 2)

[Tim Strzechowski]

"Vineland continues the romance with communication technology and machines that Pynchon began in his earlier stories.  Pynchon seems to favor machines as metaphors for his own authorial acts and the condition of his searcher-heroes. [...]

"In Vineland, the intensity of this romance with the cybernetic machine has been muted.  But because Pynchon has trained us so well, it seems writ large nonetheless.  The two significant technologies in Vineland are the computer and the Puncutron Machine, and both add incontrovertible proof that Pynchon, somewhat paradoxically, sees technology and technique -- including his own technique as author and the technologies of narration -- to be potential means to transcendence.

"In keeping with the hilarity and comedy of his story, however, the best technological image for Pynchon's thematics is the Puncutron Machine, designed to 'get the chi back flowing the right way' (163).  The language in which Pynchon registers Takeshi's first impression of it might easily be a gloss on the complex plot of vineland and the relationship with the text that Pynchon intends for the reader. [...]

"(Pynchon often makes us feel as if we are caught in a servo-mechanical loop of interpretation with the text.)  Subsequently, Takeshi wonders if the elaborate Puncutron sessions and everything they imply weren't just another plot to get him to purr into transcendence.  In other words, if we take the analogy seriously, the machinery of Pynchon's plot aids the reader in crossing between worlds, just as the Puncutron aids the reader's avatar, Takeshi, in striking a karmic balance. [...]"
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