VLVL2 (14) Father of the Year + Question Mark

[Paul Nightingale]

At Prairie's birth Zoyd has good reason to stay away if that's what he
wants; at best sidelined, he could easily claim he has been excluded
altogether. The narrative continues to offer him opportunities to walk
away, leaving the child with Sasha permanently and just disappearing;
that he doesn't begs the question as to the narrative function of this
particular character in the final hundred pages or so. He takes
responsibility for bringing back Hub to be reconciled with Sasha
(287-288). In the diaper scene (296) he realises he "should have paid
more attention, cared more for these small and at times even devotional
he'd been taking for granted": difficult to dismiss as just one
reference to good parenting when logic indicates he'd hardly take for
granted something he'd hated doing, activities that hadn't become part
of his routine. However, what should be of interest is the way this
paragraph, a detailed account of childcare/domesticity intrudes into,
and constructs a digression from, a scene focused on the appearance of
Hector, standing in for Brock Vond, to frame/bust him. Subsequently,
Zoyd's "rectal spasms of fear" (299) precede the realisation that Brock
in fact wants him to keep Prairie away from Frenesi; his response to
Brock's plotting is to fantasise (306) that Frenesi will one day turn up
in Vineland. Undeniably the text offers a image of Zoyd as a responsible
father; however, his narrative function is to both do as Brock has
ordered and offer some kind of resistance (cue the Lone Ranger
references discussed in a previous post).

The idea of such resistance features prominently in the pages describing
the journey to Vineland, incorporating elements of the picaresque, not
least in the abrupt transition from the commune to Mucho's town house
(306-307). Subsequently, our first glimpse of downtown Vineland (318)
reminds the reader of the locations that feature in the opening
chapters: as so often in VL the narrative looks both backwards (ie to
the opening chapters) and forwards (ie from its version of something
called '1970-71' to its version of something called '1984'). For
example, the scene featuring Zoyd and Claire (320) begins shortly after
Zoyd and Prairie arrive in Vineland; without warning it segues into a
time after "the war in Vietnam".