VLVL characters (was Re: Which side is he on?

[jbor]

> What I see when I read Pynchon, is that there are certain characters that
> seek to celebrate life, to enhance the enjoyment of life by those around
> them and who generally do no harm to anyone around them.  To my way of
> reading, these are the characters we are supposed to like, whose conduct
> the author endorses.
> 
> Then there are the characters who impose their will on others for the
> purpose of increasing their enjoyment of life AT THE EXPENSE of others,
> who therefore suffer and die more miserably than they would without the
> interference of the "bad" characters, who the author presents in such a
> way that the normal reader would dislike. In Pynchon these "bad"
> characters are usually members of the "system" whereas the "good"
> characters are usually the powerless, the preterite, etc.

I don't agree that Pynchon's characters can be reduced to such a simplistic
schema. Using the text we're supposedly reading as a lithmus, Frenesi, for
instance, betrays her friends and causes death and despair so that she can
enhance her own sexual enjoyment. Conversely, Hector is shown to be
constantly looking out for Zoyd's interests, as when he has called Sasha to
come and look after Prairie when Zoyd is about to be arrested (295). I'm not
sure whether she or he is meant to be "bad" or "good" according to the model
you've invented, but I do find Hector likable for the most part, and I find
some of Frenesi's actions pretty reprehensible.

Ultimately, I don't think that a white hat/black hat approach really applies
to Pynchon's fiction, and thank goodness for that. In his novels I don't get
the impression that he personally identifies or throws his lot in 100% with
any of the characters, as some sort of traditional "hero" or "moral centre"
for the text, and though there might indeed be autobiographical elements in
characters like Zoyd, Slothrop, Benny, Levine ('The Small Rain'), Siegel
('Mortality and Mercy in Vienna') etc, we're also made acutely conscious of
their (and thus his own?) human foibles and blind spots and the errors they
make. I think one of the most telling moments is that description of
authorial sloth and frustration in _GR_, where he's reduced to reading Tarot
cards and watching the Tube to try and achieve a resolution of his
characters' fates.

In _Vineland_ he's writing about a period in US history where a youth
movement rose to enormous prominence in culture and society and then was
fairly speedily overwhelmed by a repressive backlash which has prevailed to
this day. In his diagnosis of the failure/s of this countercultural movement
Pynchon interrogates both its rationale and its aims, and its relationship
to the Establishment which it opposed, or affected to oppose. For me, the
pivotal character in the novel is Prairie, and in her a question of where
the future could be headed. In my book, that's the "side" he's on.

best