VLVL: chapt 7, p. 92 real and fake

[Paul Nightingale]

>From Michael Joseph:

> ... any suggestion of the Wayvones being a metonymy of
> idealized America?  I can see this idea resonating with Otto's regarding
> the ironic identification of the good family and la cosa nostra: American
> "family values" are being equated with patriarchal control, and the City
> on the Hill becoming a mafia seizin or stronghold--which the text offers
> in several versions.

If Ch6 offers an ironic comment on the nuclear family, then Ch7 offers the
extended family: the Wayvone family is a dynasty and that effectively
idealises.

Firstly, I think, the detailed description of the Wayvone estate is
reminiscent of a film set, not least "presenting to the street a face of
single-storey modesty while behind it and down the hill for eight levels
sprawled a giant villa" etc (92): the joke being that, on a real film set,
behind the façade is 'nothing', not 'everything'.

That alone adds to the idealised view of family life, as well as preparing
for the view of the family as "a wholly-owned subsidiary" (93). British
readers should appreciate the reference to the Windsors (93-94, another
façade, if you recall the hasty name-change during WWI to deny their German
heritage/connections) as a quasi-Simpsonesque parody. And Carmine, who gets
a walk-on part as (literally) supporting cast, is an actor who has learned
his lines only to be confused by unexpected cues (95-97). The same might be
said of Ralph Sr (92-93) and also Brock Vond later on: in different ways
they illustrate the powerlessness of hired muscle. (Another joke, of course:
this is the chapter in which the Prairie-DL narrative gets under way, and
that will dictate much of what 'happens' in the rest of the novel.)

All of which begs the question, if the hired muscle is powerless, what lies
behind the façade?

Well, this use of the Wayvones as "a metonymy of idealised America" recalls
both the performance of family life elsewhere in the novel and also the way,
outside the novel, the family might function as the site upon which
political power is exercised and played out.

Once upon a time this would have included the royal family in Britain, which
reminds us of the family-as-metaphor in, eg, Hamlet or King Lear. However,
Ralph Sr's misleading image (92) also recalls successful American TV shows
of the 1980s, Dallas and Dynasty: the two Ralphs, Sr and Jr (93-94), are JR
Ewing with a different script.

As is usually the case with Pynchon, representations of representations. The
first part of Ch7 offers us an image of social power, then gleefully
undermines that image.