VLVL Sketchy in spots?

[Paul Mackin]

On Thu, 2004-01-15 at 09:38, Terrance wrote:
> > Doesn't during any sustained reading of the book one get more and more
> > used to this sort of discontinuity. Things left unexplained,
> > contradicted. Eventually we stop worrying about it.  For me it becomes
> > normal p-reality.
> > 
> > Perhaps it just works better in GR than VL. Don't know.
> 
> I think it works in VL too. For example, the Czech conspiracy in VL is
> left unexplained and the Life & Non-Life Insurance cabal simply
> disconnects like your  cell phone conversation when your satellite's
> orbit cuts through a hot spot in space. 
> The contradictions are too many to list, but we should wonder what on
> earth DL is doing hanging out with Ralph Wayvone after what he did to
> her.  Normal P-reality. Paranoid-Reel-Reality and Anti-denouement. 
> 
>  Robert, replying to Davemark, suggested that the characters in VL are
> not one-dimentional caricatures. I agree. Prairie is obviously not a
> one-dimentional caricature. But what about Vato and Blood?
> One-dimentional men, living in a one-dimentional society? Is that it? Is
> this novel more Marcuse-Freudian than GR? 
> 
> Don't know. 
> 
> T

They're both libido driven it seems to me. Therefore more Marcusean than
Marxian. I'm thinking of Marcuse in his pre-60s stance which he might
have later have had second thoughts about. 

Frenesi is multi-dimensional par excellence. Her degrees of freedom
reach into double digits. She is as free-and-easy as her name implies,
the quintessential free-spirit of the book, moving up, down, forward,
backward, zigzag. Especially zigzag. Her good looks and considerable
brains give her a latitude few could aspire to. She can be a walking
contradiction with no one to slap her into place. She can be loyal and
disloyal to the cause. She can hate and love the same man. Being able to
hate and love someone at the same time is a very edgy experience as I
suspect some of us have had occasion to find out. Pynchon is very
effective at portraying what it's like to live on the edge. Edge is one
of his favorite words. What we are dealing with here with Frenesi is
edgy experience. It is an unfortunate tactical blunder to view her in
terms of conventional morality as some of us seem compelled to do.
Instead, just live her for a while, then put the book down and do
something else, something as uplifting and non-edgy as is our wont.