VLVL 24fps and "the Movement"

[Terrance]

> 
> Yeah, I get it, but like MalignD I find that a lot of the supposedly funny
> stuff falls flat -- the kooky names, middle-aged transvestite hippie with a
> chainsaw, redhead lesbian ninja in a Batmobile -- and the narrator's
> prolixity and sarcastic tone are off-putting. There's some good stuff, but a
> lot of it comes across as strained, unpolished, sophomoric. It's his weakest
> work by far.

I agree with Edward Mendelson, the plot is tedious, the Takeshi story
drops in from another planet ... but the comic extravagance, while it
makes his [Pynchon's] books uncomfortable "to read while dressed in a
stuffed shirt ..."  is classic Pynchon. However, I also agree with
MalignD's critique of the comic "strains," which read at times like a
cacophony of ear splitting B movie dialogue and sit-com re-runs blaring
from several TV sets at once. I like Silly names, at times they are not
so silly. Some "silly" names are not so silly, more like a combination
of names in Toni Morrison and Dickens. The tone, the nattive voices, the
sarcasm, ...yeah. 


> 
> My point about Sale's book is that in it he delineates various phases in the
> '60s "Movement". And what I think Pynchon is depicting and satirising in
> _Vineland_ is the start of its final phase, as Sale also envisages it, the
> early death throes, where "the Movement" begins to fracture and disintegrate
> and ultimately collapses. I don't think Pynchon satirises or even touches on
> the earlier phases in his text, except by implication, in that *we already
> know* that there *had been* legitimate and progressive causes at stake
> earlier on and that "the Movement" itself *had been* something much more
> worthwhile and dynamic and relevant than the travesty which it has become by
> 1969-70. I think that that's the recognition which propels the satire.

Agreed. However, I think it cuts even deeper. The Death-Partners,
eternal youth and their authoritative parents, shove everyone else off
the floor.  And their histories, the untangling of lines, is satirized.
Zoyd sits down with Hector to do lunch. Hector want to tell the story of
what went down. Zoyd has his story. DL has hers. Sale has his. Meanwhile
back in the crazy world of Vineland Prairie is the kid. She is young,
the future. Will the sixties crew ever grow up and let Prairie have her
turn with the joy stick?  


> 
> And, so, I guess I disagree that "Catholicism and Conservatism" are what
> inform Pynchon's work. I think they cop the same sorts of sacred cow satire
> as most everything else does.

Oh sure, Pynchon hangs the Rocket round the Church's neck.