VLVL2 (1-5): Summative Thoughts (addendum)

[Tim Strzechowski]

Great post, man.

Yes, it is important to remember that the carrier pigeons are "each bearing a message for [Zoyd], but none of whom ... he could ever quite get to in time" (3).

In a sense, each chapter *has* been a series of "messages" for Zoyd, messages that he is somehow out of time or out of step with.

Guilt has not been a major factor in these chapters.

Guilt implies a sense of responsibility, no?  Is he mere schlemeil, a pawn in the hands of fate?

Has anything been established up to this point to equate Zoyd-guilt with goverment snitching?  government anything?

By the way, you bring up a good notion about the point of entry into the novel.  Yes, Pynchon has *chosen* to make our point of entry into this novel a character like Zoyd.  Why?  To what effect?  Why not Hector, or Prairie?  What is achieved (in terms of narrative) by making Zoyd our entry-point?

Tim



  Well, since you brought it up.

  At the risk of provoking the Australian welfare authorities again, I will say that the five chapters we've read provide more support for the suggestion that Zoyd's pigeon dream had to do with premonition than they do for the assertion that it was an expression of some free-floating anxiety about his disability guilt. In the first few sentences of the novel Zoyd wakes from a dream in which he has missed an important message. Maybe it was a warning. Something he needs to know about is coming up fast.

  In the next five chapters there's nothing, really, that suggests Zoyd has a guilty conscience. About anything. But a lot of weird and unpleasant stuff starts happening to him, and we learn enough about his history to understand he has good reason to be having bad dreams about the government's continuing interest and intervention in his life.

  Zoyd not only provides the point of view for the first five chapters, he is the point of entry into the novel. Now that his perspective is established, it filters all of the rest of the narrative for me, whether he's present or not. I think that's probably true of most readers of who have hands-on experience of 1968.

  Don   



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