VLVL (6) Pynchon's parables

[jbor]

on 6/10/03 8:53 PM, Mike Weaver at mikeweaver at gn.apc.org wrote:

> you have been making moral assumptions/value
> judgements

No. I've been constant in saying that the text resists making moral
assumptions/value judgements.

> which cannot be found in the text

Sorry, that's been one of your primary tactics.

> without shuffling to suit your
> purpose

Are the quotes and ideas I've addressed in the text or aren't they? This
attack sounds like the usual cop-out, a resort to unsupported accusations
and ad hominem when your argument has fallen flat on its face. That has been
the tone of your dialogue throughout the debate, I'd add.

> I was 
> under the impression that criticism could involve bringing one's own ideas
> in to interrogate the text.

Sure. What you've been doing, however, is trying to claim that your own
ideas are the text's, and Pynchon's. They're not.

> your tone, with regard to the hippies, student radicals and
> their forebears, has consistently been one of disapproval, treating them as
> losers who helped bring about the calamities they claimed to fight against

I've consistently said that Zoyd and Frenesi are represented as sympathetic
characters. That Zoyd is described as "vile-minded" and is a welfare cheat,
and that Frenesi betrayed her ideals and ended up marrying a petty crim who
chose to work for the government, are features of the text, however. In the
forthcoming chapter we find that DL and Takeshi are in league, or have been,
with Mafia don Ralph Wayvone Sr.

> While we can agree that P criticises the delusions and cop outs of the
> radical movements, we differ in that I am one of a number of people on this
> list who feel he does so with respect and appreciation of their hopes and
> strivings.

Good for you. Others readers recognise the fairly straightforward and
obvious fact that Pynchon distances himself from the failed and flawed
hippie radicals of the late '60s, both in _Vineland_ and in his
autobiographical 'Intro' to the _Slow Learner_ collection. I'm pretty much
in agreement with the Edward Mendelson review Terrance posted, where he says
that _Vineland_ "tries to discomfort its readers, first by agreeing with
their self-satisfied sense that their unhappiness is the result of others'
actions, then by quietly demonstrating that the actions that most afflict
them are their own." ('Levity's Rainbow', _The New Republic_ 203: 2-3, 1990,
pp. 40-6)

best