re VLVL2 conservative values & wacky comedy

Terrance lycidas2 at earthlink.net
Wed Apr 14 23:24:11 CDT 2004


Nearly everything and everybody in VL is outlandish, wacky, outrageous. 
Pynchon employs the ancient comic device of portraying the preposterous
as normal. He hopes his readers will take delight in what he has made,
especially when they discover and uncover what he has done to make them
laugh. The comic scenes should be uproariously funny, but Pynchon is not
very good at this sort of comedy. 

Wacky Babies. 

Is Prairie the exception? She should be. She is the quest figure, both
the seeker and the sought, the detective and the moral  center of the
text. And yes, she's is the conservative quest figure, just like Oedipa
and Slothrop and Stencil. 

Sorry, Paul N, but I don't read VL as a linear text. I don't know why
anyone else would. For example, it would be foolish not to loop back to
the scene in Buster's Bar, The Log Jam, where men are sitting around
dressed like Father's Day models. Wouldn't it? 

They are wearing those fancy clothes (a uniform) because they have money
and they are doing what White collar career (professional "middle
class") workers do in the USA. They are dressing for success. Dressing
as model Fathers (think 1950s)  to show that they are successful and to
let other people know that they plan to remain that way and move up the
ladder of success. The uniforms they are wearing say that they are
professionals or they have a career. They have a career, a frequently
stimulating and often fulfilling sphere of activity that has to be
balanced against the demands of family life. What's outlandish is that
they are in fact working class men. If they had remained in their Trade
Unions they (stiffs in the woods) would never have gotten rich. How
could they? Impossible. And how in hell could their brothers (those
working the mills) in the related trades be poor; they are  forced to
sell their homes, mortgage their futures, work as off-the-books grass
and tree trimmers.  But that's the case in VL. All the men, Zoyd, the
the yuppified working stiff, the unemployed mill workers, are blue
collar working class men. They do physical labor, dangerous and dirty
work. Their work is "just a job. For some, it might be "interesting
work" (Lemay to Zoyd. page 8) or challenging work, like carpentry or
bridge building or iron work ... but FAMILY comes first, not "the job."
Family and not work provides the basic meaning and satisfaction of life. 


So why does Zoyd want to go mess with a bunch of working class bad ass
blue color workers? 

Return of the Jedi? Vietnam? What?



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