VLVL the collapse of the Youth Movement

[Joseph Tracy]

I was involved with the site for awhile, but left because the structure is annoying. So I came back a few days ago to see what was under discussion and have been reading through some of the VL threads. I hope the discussion continues awhile, so I can reread the novel. So far I am a bit surprised at the emphasis on the undermining of the variously described youth/ anti war / progressive/ democratic reform/ anti- imperialist/ anti-corporate/ ... movement.
I see the novel as a marked introduction of a more benignly humorous and hopeful tone to Pynchon�s writing. If there is this thread of hope it is obviously a fragile and vulnerable hope, Pynchon is no sentimentalist, but I just wanted to make a modest case for my notion. 
First, to anyone who has lived in the region as I did for 8 years, the story clearly begins and ends in Arcata, California. Arcata was the first town in America to elect a Green party mayor and city council. The eco -folk there aren't just dreamers either, they successfully turned a dump area into a bio marsh wetlands/ waste processing plant which locals resort to for its beauty and profusion of birds; it coincidentally saved the city millions over the costs of a chemical processing plant. It is one of the few places where the eco-warriors are as plentiful and powerful as the clear-cutting industry I think there is a sense in which Pynchon is delineating a thread of hope in a very traditional notion of human connection to the local community and earthscape. Betrayed , but not destroyed Zoyd moves over the course of the novel from a dysfunctional hiding to a deeper and less illusional connection to his life, his past, his daughter and the place he lives. It may be impossible to bring down the imperialist, Info- police-state, science as warfare, capitalist juggernaut via a student revolution, but don't Arcata, Taos, Brazil, Costa Rica,Venezuela, Vermont, and similar places show it possible for one town, and even a state or country to keep its head on straight while living in a culture of lies and war mania. And isn�t that love for an actual place a more reasonable, appealing and possible grounds for resisting empire than a youth movement or a one world communist utopia?
I see the thanatoids as the unruly ghosts of the earth forces and earth cultures which the imperial, fascist, religion and science as war culture has sought to demonize, kill, bury and forget. In V these subterranean forces were cold, dreamy, hard, intoxicants and opiates, but in Vineland they appear with a show of power and a flourish of dark humor to defend an outpost of sanity and usher the fascist agents into the dark bony bowels of their domain.
I too had the Free&Easy interpretation of Frenesi Gates� name but found her character quite credible. The trouble being that free isn't easy and easy isn't free. The name shows the all too human dilemma.. Struggling for freedom is dangerous and doesn�t pay well. Fascism offers comforts , but destroys the conscience and fragile beauty of the humanity it proposes to defend. The choices are too stark for most of us, and in the confusion of the resulting culture wars, Wal Mart, Microsoft, and a club of fascist terrorists posing as pro freedom anti-terrorists have taken temporary control of the planet. But a planet is a hard thing to control, worse than a teenager. 
The crying of Lot 49 looks back to medieval wars over the control of the written word , presages the modern media wars and offers an uncontrollable human urge to know and share the truth as tonic. Vineland looks back to the cultural warfare of the 60's, presages the war between global mono-culture and natural diversity and offers as a breath of hope the human love for children and place, and the living planet�s defense mechanisms.




Joseph Tracy
brook7 at earthlink.net
Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20040224/4bb8464c/attachment.html>