VLVL (6) Pynchon's parables

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 3:00 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL (6) Pynchon's parables


> on 2/10/03 7:02 PM, Mike Weaver at mikeweaver at gn.apc.org wrote:
>
> > One basic interpretation of Vineland rests on the question of P's
> > sympathies, ie whether he is writing from within the left or  from
outside.
>
> These aren't the only two possibilities, of course. I think that Pynchon's
> texts, including _Vineland_, resist such partisanship and simplistic
> either/ors. They satirise and repudiate the myth-making which goes on in
all
> spheres of human enterprise, including politics, and particularly the sort
> of "us" versus "them" rhetoric which ideologues like Mike are so fond of.
>

I don't claim that P. is celebrating the left, but his criticism (his
deconstruction of 60's myths) is from within the left spectrum and not from
the neo-con point of view that calls the 60's left generation a complete
failure and responsible for the sad state of affairs in the eighties --
being used for the roll-back of civil liberties which indeed were enlarged
after and through the 60's. Zoyd's jump is a warning that the government
agencies use the 60's myths for their purposes.

> How ironic that, in a novel which he's brandishing as a shining manifesto
> and celebration of "left" politics in the U.S., he can't find even one
> example of an achievement of note, let alone a "victory". And not one cite
> from the text where "compromise" is condoned, or where it's differentiated
> from "betrayal", where "active" and "passive" agency are defined and
> demarcated as he'd like these to be. Just more of the same polemical
> sophistries and generalisations, along with the standard attempt to
> misrepresent and demonise dissenting viewpoints.
>

Ironic, indeed. He does portray all those "little criminals" as victims of
the big criminals like he portrays the "left" as a victim of a pre-fascist
society where the political control of the money is in the hands of federal
agents. There hasn't been a left victory, the war has been ended not because
the left was able to gain political power but because the military machinery
had been defeated. Brock Vond's career ends because of the reagonomics, not
because the elected parliament decided to end those unconstitutional
practices.

> The novel ends, history seemingly replaying itself in a loop, with the
> daughter and heir of this glorious American "left" heritage lying awake as
> the midnight fast approaches, calling out for the "fascist" patriarch to
> come back and claim her as his own: "Come on, come in. I don't care. Take
me
> anyplace you want." Funny? Mild criticism? Yeah, right.
>

Prairie is just a confused child, confused by all that has happened to her
and BV's claim that he's her father.

> And that sit-com style happy ending, with Desmond the dog, "spit and image
> of his grandmother, Chloe", and his miraculous return, is no more than
> another tawdry repeat on the Tube.
>
> best

This is indeed a heavy criticism, but not of the left but of the way the
tube, hardly in the hands of left radicals, sells and forges the American
reality.

Otto