VLVL2 (14): Father of the Year

[Tim Strzechowski]

296:  "While Sasha talked and played, Zoyd took off Prairie's diaper, got rid of the shit and rinsed off the diaper in the toilet, threw it in with the others along with some Borax in a plastic garbage can that was just about heavy enough to pack up the hill to the laundromat, came back in with a warm cloth and a tube of Desitin, made sure his ex-mother-in-law noticed he was wiping in the right direction, and only about the time he was pinning the new diaper on remembering that he should have paid more attention, cared more for these small and at times even devotional routines he'd been taking for granted, now, with the posse in the parlor, too late, grown so suddenly precious. . . ."


I recall at the beginning of our VL group read (it's been goin' on almost three years now, no?) that someone commented on Zoyd's being a lousy father.  Can't recall the evidence that person used to support his/her statement, perhaps something about smoking a half a joint and watching news footage of the window jump in Prairie's presence.

Regardless, I find the above passage interesting mainly because of what it tells us about Zoyd as a father.  Certainly if he's "busted" and Sasha is in the house, he (if he were a "bad" dad) needn't go through the trouble of changing young Prairie, let alone rinsing the diaper, adding the Borax, applying the Desitin, etc.  Plenty that he does in the passage is simply done when you care properly for your child, and Pynchon makes a point of telling us these.

Yet, Zoyd "made sure his ex-mother-in-law noticed he was wiping in the right direction," and only after pinning the diaper does he show regret for taking for granted these "devotional routines," since kids become "grown so suddenly."  Of course, regret doesn't mean he's a bad parent, only that he realizes the value of what is now threatened to be lost forever, and assuring himself of Sasha's "wiping" approval is probably a reflex learned long ago from a disapproving in-law (note that it's the ass-wipe that he checks for approval; applying ointment isn't, suggesting that he's doing *that* out of a sense of responsibility as the caretaker).

Ultimately, Zoyd's devotion to Prairie in this passage -- ensuring that she is asleep in the next room (294), textbook diaper changing (296), and chatting with Prairie to ease the transition to Sasha's custody, at least for the moment (296 - 97) -- demonstrates yet again that Zoyd may not be the best father in the world of Pynchon, he's at least a fairly competent and loving one.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20040411/fe9c4984/attachment.html>