VLVL: What troubles Zoyd's sleep?

[jbor]

>> 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.

on 22/9/03 7:57 AM, Terrance wrote:
 
> An example: 
> 
> What reader,  after reading VL,  would not judge Brock Vond's raid on
> Zoyd's house unethical, dishonorable, amoral, and illegal?

Sure, but where does the text actually say it's any of these things? Where
are these judgements made? Where is the "moral yardstick", and what is it?

And, as Hector does say, in reality it's just some "estupidass
marriage-counsellor errand" he's running for Brock anyway (295.14). If we're
tempted to excuse all of Zoyd's behaviour and character flaws on the grounds
that he truly loves Frenesi and he has been a good provider for Prairie, why
can't we excuse Brock's behaviour in setting up the raid on the same basis?
It's the exact same motive and aim sitting behind it all. In his way, Brock
loves Frenesi too, and he sets up the raid and deal so that Zoyd will be
collecting regular payments from the government which are going to assist in
supporting Frenesi's child. What justification is there - apart from
preconceived notions of "good" and "bad" - for applying the double standard?

I've come around a bit to your way of thinking I admit. I agree that
*sometimes* Pynchon's texts do provide explicit judgements which are
detached from the characters' povs. One example from the current chapter is
when Zoyd is described as "vile-minded" (60.7). Whose judgement is that? I
think it has to be the narrator's. Another example is the summative
observation inserted by the narrator in the previous chapter:

    War in Vietnam War, murder as an instrument of American
    politics, black neighborhoods torched to ashes and death,
    all must have been off on some other planet. (38.18)

The observation is juxtaposed with Zoyd's Hallmark memory of his wedding to
Frenesi, where the "visible world was a sunlit sheep farm". What it points
up for me is a contrast between the blind romanticism and self-involvement
of the hippies, these particular hippies at least, and the terrible things
which were actually going on all around them at the time. The implication I
read is that it was these hippies who were "off on some other planet".

Why *doesn't* Zoyd remember the Vietnam War, or the torching of black
neighbourhoods? And what are PR3 actually protesting about in the novel?

> 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?

Using the sanctity of human life as a moral yardstick, what Frenesi does is
just as "bad", if not much much worse.

Likewise, noting that Zoyd is a "welfare cheat" is purely a descriptive
statement. It's what he is. The reader supplies the value judgement.

As I noted, the texts (invariably) don't provide "moral yardsticks", these
are (more often than not) brought into play by the reader. And for much of
the time Pynchon's texts actually complicate and/or challenge many of the
sort of consensus notions of "good" and "bad" you allude to.

That said, I don't think the mode of discourse operating in Pynchon's texts
can be so simply defined and dismissed as the "mirror held up to the
reader". Likewise, I don't think the mantra that _Vineland_ is "about work",
though it is certainly this in part, does justice to the range of themes
which are evident in the novel.

I don't think these are major disagreements in the larger scheme of things,
however, and there's much more that I agree with than disagree with in what
you write below. And, at least, we're both reading the book!

best


 
> 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. 
> 
> 
> 
> 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. 
> 
> 
> I agree with this. And we will see, as we read on, that things are not
> what they "should be" or what we would "expect them to be"   if we
> weren't reading this novel for the third or fourth or umpteen time.
> However, I'm not sure that this "pretzelization" (to take s~Z's term
> again) of characters and themes, and the moral ambiguities that are
> created by them,  need become the mirror held up to the reader.
> 
> 
> 
> 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).
> 
> And, he also says,  the success of the "new left" was limited by the
> failure of two classes (the college kids & the blue-collar workers) to
> WORK together and communicate. SL.7
> 
> Obviously,  I think this is what Vineland is about.
> 
> 
>> 
>>> 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).
> 
> 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.
> 
> Zoyd simply doesn't see any of this.
> 
> Pynchon sees it. It's Lardass and the Class angle. Loyalties, and where
> to put them. 
> 
> Zoyd isn't sure what he is, who he belongs too.
> 
> VL is a bout a man who can't make up his mind?
> 
> He's a walking contradiction. He too works for Hobbes. And he goes to
> Hobbes to get cash.
> 
> NO Japanese tree deal, not yuppified Log Jam. So why does Zoyd want to
> mess with the blue collar guys?
> 
> Guys would be in no mood to see some left over long hair in a dress
> parading the media around their stomping grounds?
> 
> Zoyd sort of understands this but he doesn't really.
> 
> But we can't blame this pot head. Can we? He's not college educated guy.
> He's not political. He's not a feminist. He's just another outlaw who
> came riding into town and became a local business man.
> 
> 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?