VLVL: What troubles Zoyd's sleep?

[Richard Fiero]

Terrance wrote:
>  . . .
>What reader,  after reading VL,  would not judge Brock Vond's raid on
>Zoyd's house unethical, dishonorable, amoral, and illegal?
>
>Few, if any.
>If the vast majority of readers agree that Brock is a very bad guy,
>isn't it likely that Pynchon created a bad guy in Brock Vond?

No, it doesn't follow unless Terrance's reader is completely 
unfamiliar with the real world. This is the problem with the 
unreal coziness between instructors and their students.
For real world prosecutors note Jeff Gordon in the James Dalton 
Bell case, the motives for the original break-in at Waco by the 
BATF, Scott Teter in "Siege at Rainbow  Farm" 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n1305/a07.html?134
and so on. But these are causes for right-wing anarchists. 
Otherwise, apparently no one gives a shit if the government is killing us.

>I think so.
>
>If Pynchon's novels have bad guys like BV in them doesn't it follow that
>they must also have some kind of moral yard stick by which such
>characters are said to be bad?
>
>I think so.

Here's one from William S. Burroughs:
==========
In 1959 I wrote in Nova Express:

PLAN DRUG ADDICTION

Now you are asking me whether I want to perpetuate a narcotics 
problem and I say:

"Protect the disease. Must be made criminal protecting society 
form the disease."

The problem scheduled in the United States the use of jail, 
former narcotics plan, addiction and crime for many years. 
Addiction in some form is the basis. Must be wholly addicts. 
Any voluntary capacity subversion of the Will Capital and 
Treasury Bank. Infection dedicated to traffic in exchange 
narcotics demonstrated a Typhoid Mary who will spread the 
narcotics problem to the United Kingdom... Cut Up of Fighting 
Drug Addiction by Malcolm Monroe Former Prosecutor in the 
Western World, October 1959. IT almost needs a new word.

Additional notes on drug farms: There is an exclusive district 
in drug farms reserved for the DO-RIGHTS... nicer roomed more 
medication better class of people. On the other hand there is a 
place set aside for the Do-WRONGS over in section B with the 
other canine preparations.

(Research at drug farms has conclusively established the 
addiction liability of decorticated canine preparations in 
plain English dogs with their brains cut out who nonetheless 
react with sham rage and uncoordinated clonic movements when 
medication is withheld.)

Now about these Do Rights I don't say they are veteran 
informers, just normal human creeps. Here is Mr Average Do 
Right shows up at the door with letters from his clergy man 
bankmanager boss and boy picture of himself as an Eagle Scout 
shaking hands with a priest on graduation day Old glory 
stirring in the breeze of June. Not an informer exactly just a 
front office brown nose.

"Doctor, when I die I want to be buried right in the same 
coffin with you. Why you've made me see it all so clear, I'm shaking all over."

"I'll put you down for some more medication, son."

"Thank you doctor. Pushers should receive the death penalty. 
And everybody knows pot-smoking leads to heroin like whisky 
draws a priest?" Of such stuff are DO-RIGHTS made. While down 
in the dim grey region Where the DO-WRONGS hawk and spit..."

"The croakers wouldn't give me a goofball... ask me what the 
United States Flag means to me? I tell him soak it in HEROIN 
doc and I'll suck it... said I had the WRONG attitude I should 
see the Padre and get it straight with Jesus."
==========

Clearly, we're better off talking about HOW Mr. Pynchon does 
this rather than what it all seems to mean.


>  . . . Right, all the gin-mills in town have gone new age and yuppie. Zoyd
>thinks that the Log Jam, being far away from the center of town,  will
>still be full of blue collar working class guys. You know,  guys who
>drive pick-up trucks, listen to country music, wear Red Wing work boots
>and Carhart bibs, risk life and limb everyday doing dangerous work and
>go to the bar after the day's work  to relax.
>
>So why does he want to get in a dress and mess with these guys?
>
>These working class guys  are going to be a bit amused,  but pretty
>pissed off too,  by some left-over hippie in drag cutting up their bar
>with a lady's  imported looking chain saw.
>
>That's what Zoyd expects.
>
>But why does he want to piss these guys off?
>
>Why not go to one of the yuppified joints? Hell, he's doing business
>with them. With friends like Van Meter and Ralph Jr., why in world would
>Zoyd go pickin a fight with blue collar lumberjacks?
>
>
>If the Japanese weren't buying up raw lumber, the Cutters and Choke
>Setters wouldn't be driving Lexus and Mercedes Trucks and wearing
>fancy-ass blue suede shoes and Land's End chammy shirts. Their brother
>mill-workers wouldn't be working for Hobbes Tree Service. They work for
>Hobbes because he pays in cash (off the books) and they all have more
>Shylock's on their backs than Venetian dock workers so they need cash.

Where do we suppose the Japanese are getting all these dollars 
they are throwing around? From us of course and there's nowhere 
to spend it rather than right here. Real estate and movie 
studios at bubble prices,  . . . a few dollars thrown at the 
scabs to let their jobs go elsewhere.  Recall Mr. Reagan's 
remark that interest rates pushing 20% were a great magnet for 
"foreign" money. Mr. Pynchon is not writing about this. It just 
happens to be the case.

>Zoyd is sooooo confused. No discipline. No moral heart.
>
>But we don't want Zoyd to grow up. He won't be any fun. Hell, how many
>grown men jump through windows in colorful party dresses?

The under the table economy is large. Mr. Rogoff in an IMF 
publication has stated that there is $650B in US paper money 
sloshing around -- enough for every man woman and child to be 
holding $2200. Since 60% of it is in $100 bills, if only US 
citizens were holding the cash each man woman and child should 
have thirteen $100 bills.
Afraid I only see the real world here as the vehicle for great fiction.