VLVL2 odds 'n' ends

[pynchonoid]

Gotta agree with Toby here, that the quotation from
Emerson on page 369 sums up a very important, perhaps
central theme of _Vineland.  Brock Vond and the
neofascist government that employs him have done their
worst, have managed to separate parent and child, but
they still haven't managed to destroy Prairie's
family. In similar fashion, the worst excesses of the
'60s counterculture haven't managed to destroy
Prairie's family, either. 

"Secret retributions are always restoring the level,
when disturbed, of divine justice. It is impossible to
tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and
monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders
to
heave the bar. Settles forever more the ponderous
equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and
sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the
recoil."
 
It's an old idea, of course; see also Psalm 37:1-2,
"Do not be provoked by evildoers; do not envy those
who do wrong.
Like grass they wither quickly; like green plants they
wilt away."


"Natural high" was one of the benefits promised by
Jesus freaks when they came through my college
dormitory in 1970 trying to convince people to accept
Jesus Christ as their personal savior instead of
smoking pot and dropping acid.  To people who enjoyed
the pleasures of those substances (and fornication,
plus a host of other "sins" that seemed pretty
natural), it sounded funny and strange.

Ghetta:
[...] No, Prarie is also fascinated with Brock's
penis/gun, his 
strength/power, 
and she wants to feel it used aginst her. She's got
tha penis-envy 
thing in 
her blood.  And she is dissapointed when his power is
yanked away from 
him 
via a long-distance power shift (so impersonal).  All
this makes no 
sense in 
real-life human terms, but that's not what Pynchon is
concerned about, 
and 
his lack of that concern shows throughout the book.
[...]

And they said nobody would pay to study by mail with
the George W. Bush Correspondence School of Literary
Discourse!





	
		
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