VLVL: chapt 7, p. 92 real and fake

[Paul Nightingale]

>From Michael Joseph:

> 
> Setting: The Wayvone Estate south of San Francisco "occupying a dozen
> hillsides" in Mediterranean Revival style (popular in San Francisco,
> 1920-1940s).
> 
> A nostalgic imitation of Renaissance palazzo, the Med. R.  style seems
> Pynchon's tongue-in-cheek gesture at his own Vineland trope. Foregrounds
> notions of "real" and "fake": MR style imitated a style which was itself
> invented as a facade by wealthy Italian business men during the late
> medieval, early Renaissance.
>

It's perhaps worth comparing the way Pynchon constructs the opening to
chapters that emphasise location, by which I mean Ch3 (22), Ch4 (35), Ch6
(68) and Ch7 (92). Of course, there are many more locations, in-doors and
out-of-doors, sketched in; but when the chapter begins with a passage that
locates the setting specifically, as CH7 does ("a dozen hillside acres south
of San Francisco" - 92) it might be worthwhile dwelling on the way Pynchon
makes use of this particular convention (and makes use of it to locate
characters).

For example, in the context of a chapter dealing with Zoyd's resilience, the
Gordita Beach house has "proved to be sturdier than it looked" (22). The
"generations of paint jobs" are a way of recording a particular kind of
history, the record left behind by people who have lived there. And then, of
course, further on, the "Casbah topography that was easy to get lost in"
(25) seems noteworthy, in context, given Hector's failure to turn/understand
Zoyd.

Ch4 begins with Zoyd's journey "up a ridge of as yet unlogged second-growth
redwoods", which phrase might be juxtaposed to the "erased-enough trail"
further down the page (35).

Ch6 is located in "a pale humid Sun Belt city" with an "almost familiar
name" where the anonymity of the shopping malls matches that of the teenage
mall rats whose labour makes them economically viable (and which reference
is a forerunner to the extended descriptions of labour history further on in
this chapter).

Ch7's opening, then, might be contrasted to the Gordita Beach passage (the
description of a house/home) and also the description of changing/evolving
locations (Ch6). The way Ralph Sr is 'discovered', so to speak, on-set is
markedly different to anything that has gone before.