Vineland underrated

[Mike Weaver]

>We're all pretty confused about it...VL is certainly not an
overt Left-Wing novel.

King Terrance - it might be an idea if you were to say what you think makes 
an overt Left Wing novel - the capitalisation was your addition, and 'overt 
' is a useful get out addition, John simply called it left-wing.

Vineland IMLWO is a novel written by a writer with clear left wing/radical 
sympathies, who has chosen to take some time to tell a tale of hopes, 
actions and betrayals where the norm is the activity of radicals, lefties 
and drop-outs, where the betrayal is occasioned by the daughter of a strong 
labour movement/socialist family tradition taking up with and working for 
the (capitalist) Establishment. The novel ends with the annual gathering of 
that family, taking the prodigal back into its warmth, thereby reasserting 
the communal values of the Wobblies and their descendants.
(In my chapter notes I referred to Harry Chaplin's book where he says of 
the IWW that by the 1930s the balance of activity leaned more towards 
'entertainment'  i.e. socials, picnics etc.)
A novel doesn't have to be a call to arms to be left wing, it only has to 
be critical of the established system while asserting  positive social 
possibilities as an alternative, something VL does rather well.