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

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2003 12:40 AM
Subject: Re: VLVL: What troubles Zoyd's sleep? (Was Why Hawaii and Summative
Thoughts)
>
>
>
> Zoyd sleeps in like a teenager while his teen daughter heads off to work
> (after feeding the dog, taking a message for him from the TV people and
> arranging a ride with Thapsia).

"Later than usual (...)" (3). So normally he gets up earlier.

> He hasn't learned much. Still a boy who refuses to grow up.

If growing up means that this is ok he does best not growing up too much:
"War in Vietnam, murder as an instrument of American politics, black
neighborhoods torched to ashes and death, (...)." (38)

That's been the US-reality the hippies refused to accept.

In all those years of  "the deal" Zoyd wasn't able to change, he couldn't do
any other thing than leading his hippie-life and keep doing his annual
"transfenestration" (7).

> (see P's
> comments on American Males in SL Intro and Benny Profane, Pig Bodine and
> the whole sick crew of American boyz)

"On the negative side, however, both forms of the movement placed too much
emphasis on youth, including the eternal variety." (SL Intro, 9)

But he also says at the end of that text:
"What is most appalling about young folks, after all, is the changes, not
the still photograph of finished character but the movie, the soul in flux.
May this small attachment to my past is only another case of what Frank
Zappa calls a bunch of old guys sitting around playing rock 'n' roll. But as
we all know, rock 'n' roll will never die, and education too, as Henry Adams
always sez, keeps going on forever." (23)

> Zoyd's neglect of his daughter is
> not quite as bad as the abuse so many of the kids in this novel have to
> put up (not from the government but from their baby-boom parents), but
> Prairie is constantly complaining about his lack of parenting skills,
> his pot smoking, his sexual proclivities, and so on.  The moral yard
> stick is in the text.
>

I very much agree to Don. His education had turned Prairie into a great,
self-reliant kid.

Education is about the transfer of values, isn't it? Zoyd's message to his
daughter seems to have been tolerance. So Prairie's complaint is that he
isn't tolerant enough according to his own values in judging Isaiah 2.4:

"You are judging him by his haircut, his haircut alone (...) You've turned
into exactly the same kind of father that used to hassle you, back when you
were a teen hippie freak." (17)

> Why does Zoyd plan to mess  with hard working men at the Log Jam? What
> did they do to him?
>

It's an error, it's been rescheduled (8), and he hadn't listened
carefully to Slide (5).

> Why does he write a hot check for the dress?
>

Because he's broke.

> Why does a girl around his daughter's age say he should be locked up?
>

It's actually a girl "younger than his daughter." (5)

Because this girl obviously is living in a "normal" American
family-environment where it seems to be the normal point of
view that people who dress strangely should be locked up.

>
> Why is he doing business with all these criminal types?
>

Doing business in the USA means doing business with criminal types.
That's the message we get out of the news and out of all those movies
and tube-stuff. Zoyd and his "partners" are just minor criminals
compared to the big and global players.

> And with new age restaurants that cater to yuppies?
>
> Why does he get off driving in the fog with his lights off?
>

He was helping to save the hemp harvest. Anything to object to in this
behaviour? The country which sells the most firearms in the world, which is
sponsoring types like Saddam Hussein (exactly at the time of the novel) and
places weapons of mass destruction wherever it wants is worried about
home-grown marijuana. I think "Vineland" makes very clear how ridiculous the
American way was (is?) in treating its own children as criminals for some
harmless habit.

> Why, at the novel's end, is Zoyd still driving in the fog with his
> lights off and hoping to run into Brock Vond?
>

I cannot find that. Please drop me a page number. In my copy of "Vineland"
the last we get to know of Zoyd is the conversation with Flash and Prairie.
She's coming over "from hustling Justin into his sleeping bag" (374). She's
got an overdose of family and needs some time alone. Quite understandable
after just having found out that she's got a stepfather and a little
stepbrother. But she's understood why both men fell in love with Frenesi,
and the last things Zoyd says in the novel is: "Give us a hint." (375)
No driving into the fog at the novel's end.

> Zoyd is a wonderful character. We like him.
>

Pure sarcasm from your side. Yes, I like Zoyd, regardless
to all his inner contradictions.

> We can't save him. He's gonna stay in Never Never Land.

Very unlikely. Now that Brock is gone he will give up the jump, he will go
on living with Prairie and he will have to look for another job because the
disability check won't come any longer; and Frenesi will stay with Flash and
Justin. But they will meet at the usual family dates; Thanksgiving, several
birthdays, Christmas. The last word of the novel is "home" (385) and the
major American value attached to "home" is family.

Otto