VLVL: Holding up a mirror...

[Paul Mackin]

On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 22:30, Don Corathers wrote:
> The past couple days of discussion suggest that Pynchon's text is a highly
> reflective surface--that each reader finds in Vineland a political meaning
> cast in his or her own image (except for Keith, who apparently is both
> contrarian and pessimist). If that's true, the book is an extraordinary
> achievement in fiction for that reason alone.
> 
> This thread of the conversation has been going on, in various forms, since
> the beginning of the reading, and I'm sure it will be with us to the end.
> I'm wondering if, to lay a sort of foundation for the next few months of
> wasted bandwidth, we can find anything that most of us can agree on about
> the book's political coordinates.
> 
> For example, and to cast the net as wide as I can throw it, can we agree
> that the author disapproves of Brock Vond's conduct? (For the purposes of
> this discussion, I'm assuming we've all been to the end of the book and back
> at least once.)

Can't say as I approve of Brock's conduct (he's obviously a god-damed
son of a bitch) but do think that he and to a lesser extent Frenesi
(whose conduct also stinks) give to the novel whatever interest and
appeal it has.

Brock's understanding of the student "revolutionaries" (which I,
correctly or incorrectly, assume is or was Pynchon's own) is worth the
price of the book. The childlike immaturity of that lot was accurately
portrayed. 

As for the hippies like Zoyd, are they to be included as Marcuse has it
in One-Dimensional Man among the inheritors of Marx's proletariat? If so
Vineland qualifies as a left-wing or revolutionary novel. It's not one
people of the Left are likely to be very enthusiastic about however.

P.