VLVL: What troubles Zoyd's sleep? (Was Why Hawaii and Summative Thoughts)

[David Morris]

I agree with Don.  Pynchon doesn't judge his schlemiel's too harshly.  They are
us (and especially him).  And wartime commerce is a treasured pastime for
Pynchon's military folk.  Military folk-art is Pynchon's love.

David Morris

--- gumbo at fuse.net wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure where the moral yardstick that's being used here to measure Zoyd
> comes from, but I don't think it's in the text. 
> 
> Of the characters we've met so far, only Hector has much of anything to say
> to Zoyd about the way he conducts his life, and Hector's motives and
> perspective are both worth examining. A narc, a putative filmmaker, and a boy
> with a media consumption problem, Hector's not exactly a beacon of mental
> health himself. In the course of their 15 or so years of acquaintance,
> Hector's efforts to help Zoyd have included persistently trying to turn him
> into a snitch and framing him in a massive dope bust.
> 
> If you look again at the catalogue of Zoyd's failings, I think you'll find
> that most of them--certainly the monthly disability check and his screwed-up
> love life--can be directly traced to the actions of Brock Vond and Company.
> If Zoyd sleeps uneasily it's because of BV's malevolence, not because of his
> own conscience.
> 
> (Btw, I read the Blood and Vato history a little differently. I assumed they
> were in a business partnership with the Viet Cong, in the grand Pynchonian
> tradition of wartime commerce, as part of their involvement in Gorman Flaff's
> "legendary operations in money orders and piastres." (182) Which is not the
> same thing as working *for* them, or giving them information, as was
> suggested in another post a while back.)
> 
> Don
> 


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