VLVL: What troubles Zoyd's sleep?

[jbor]

on 20/9/03 8:40 AM, Terrance wrote:

> 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).
> He hasn't learned much. Still a boy who refuses to grow up. (see P's
> comments on American Males in SL Intro and Benny Profane, Pig Bodine and
> the whole sick crew of American boyz) 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 agree. I guess the only thing I'd contest is the idea that the "moral
yardstick is in the text". I'd argue that judgements, "moral" and otherwise,
are (invariably) brought to Pynchon's texts by the reader. I think Pynchon
pushes the envelope, certainly, and more often than not in his texts what we
instinctively or stereotypically want to feel towards a character or
situation is undermined, chipped away piece by piece, as events are viewed
from different perspectives, and as the characters' attitudes and behaviours
are revealed. But the SL 'Intro' is pretty clear in its criticisms of the
"hippie resurgence", and it's pretty clear in the way that Pynchon,
classifying himself as "post-Beat", distances his own attitudes and
experience from it ("the hippie resurgence came along ten years later" p.9).

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

He tells Slide that "window jumping's in my past" (5.1-3); he still wants
those regular disability cheques, of course, and he's still going to fulfil
his part of the deal (i.e. doing "something publicly crazy" each year: 3.11)
to keep on getting them. But "this year" he has decided to change his act
for some reason (it's probably tied in with those carrier pigeons in his
dream and his general feelings of uneasiness), and so he's going up to the
Log Jam with his chain saw on spec. to try to cause a scene there. He even
called the "local TV station to recite to them this year's press release"
(3.21) and tell them about the change in the schedule. But even fifteen year
old Slide knows he has misjudged the venue and clientele (5.4-9).
 
> Why does he write a hot check for the dress?

He picks out a colourful "party dress" which he thinks "would look good on
television" (4.15-17). That's his priority. He seems to know the cheque will
bounce, but he's not worried about that at all.
 
> Why does a girl around his daughter's age say he should be locked up?

For a crime against fashion. That's the literal context of the remark, but
there's also a darker implication, or should be, for Zoyd.

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

Zoyd's been turning a blind eye for a long while, ever since that day back
in Gordita Beach (23-4).

> And with new age restaurants that cater to yuppies?

For the extra cash.

> Why does he get off driving in the fog with his lights off?

It's him and his buddies clinging on to their youth. Even though he'd lost a
"high percentage of his classmates, blank rectangles in the yearbooks, to
drunk driving and failed machinery" (37-8), this sort of devil-may-care
risk-taking is a badge of membership in suburban youth culture -- however
irresponsible and potentially self-destructive it has proven to be.

best

> Why, at the novel's end, is Zoyd still driving in the fog with his
> lights off and hoping to run into Brock Vond?
>
> Zoyd is a wonderful character. We like him.
> 
> We can't save him. He's gonna stay in Never Never Land.