The story isn't over

[Joseph Tracy]

Pynchonoid said:
What's left to discuss? Every time anybody posts
anything, it gets smothered with reams of "Vineland's
about WORK" and "Pynchon condemns the 60s
counterculture for the same reasons as
Nixon/Reagan-Bush/today's neo-cons",...

Ahh, beg to differ. I do not feel smothered, and I am certainly in 

disagreement with the above mentioned arguments. There has been an 

odd lull, but I wanted to post some thoughts from the end of the 

last chapter as the discussion moves on. The Pynchon related  

information is great. I really want to go see Zak Smith'work at the 

whitney; I'm a visual artist myself and have a feeling some work 

will come out of this meditation on Vineland. Any way what follows 

are more thoughts on Vineland.



In a universe expanded from a single point there is no center, or 

rather one place is as much the center as another.Kinda puts you in 

an interesting position. Entropy too is a pretty egalitarian setup; 

everyone in their own lonely center of the universe engaged in some 

phase of the same heartbreaking attempt to find or make  meaning 

out of the constant invention and dissolution, . Sexual intimacy 

can be a way of connecting to the entire world of feelings, 

memories, sensations and thoughts which are to be found in the 

lover or it can be a kind of score in a masturbatory game. 

"...playing for nothing but the score itself, the row of numbers, a 

chance of entering her initials among those of the other strangers 

for a brief time, no longer the time the world observed, but game 

time, underground time, time that would take her nowhere outside 

its own tight and falseley deathless perimeter."
       VL pg.293

This insular, game-time frame of mind seems to me to be 

characteristic both of the true believer and the Machiavellian 

schemer. It is not inclusive, not empathic,  not balanced by 

discourse or open minded exchange. While it seems to be self 

serving, it is  actually self destructive if you think of the self 

as nourished and enriched by intelligent interaction with the 

largest possible map of the world.

 I think it is this kind of inclusive , give and take intelligence 

that Pynchon is trying to map out in the Gates/   extended family 

as a healthy alternative to the bizarre  and obsesssive monoculture 

of the Reagan, Bush, Rock Wand,  Werner Von Braun police state 

"vision thing".

 I wonder what Pynchon thinks of Buckminster Fuller's idea that 

intelligence is anti-entropic.  Of course intelligence is not as 

easy to identify as it might seem.  The name of the Central 

Intelligence Agency is as Orwellian a use of the word intelligence 

as the Justice Department is of the word justice. 


 What good is it being a smart mammal if your inventions destroy 

mammalian life.The 60's saw the coming of age of a generation aware 

from childhood of the power of the state to destroy the planet. A 

rennaissance was called for , a revolution, some serious drugs, a 

change of cosciousness, a better narrative than apocolypse now. 

Everyone had a go at shaping that narrative. Amateurs picked up the 

cameras and pointed them back at the professional history/ 

moviemakers. Big answers were called for and big answers were born 

out of the prodigious crosspollination of cultures ,business, 

science, lovers, artists, and crazies. Fascism is not inevitable, 

and the story isn't over. Vineland, along with some spicy cynicism, 

is a comic ode to cross-pollination. A lingering question about who 

touched the free and easy heart of the 60s, and where did Miriam 

hide the baby when Pharoah's Fuckers came to town. 






Joseph Tracy
brook7 at earthlink.net
Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.
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