VLVL Thoreen

[jbor]

http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/thoreen24.htm

It's probably timely to revisit Thoreen's article -- there's been very
little discussion of it thus far and the bulk of his thesis revolves around
a couple of paragraphs in the final section of the text. His comments on the
actual novel, few though they are, are interesting and perceptive, though he
does seem to focus on one aspect or theme within the text disproportionately
and out of context in order to establish his central thesis. I don't agree
that the progression from "Lincoln's responsible and necessary exercise of
extra-constitutional power to Reagan's secret and potentially arbitrary
exercise of more dictatorial power [...] is the subtext of Vineland" (it may
be *a* subtext, but I'm not sure that's accurate either), or that the
interrupted tv broadcast on p. 339 is "a moment as apocalyptic as any in
recent fiction", or that where Thoreen sees "the continuing pattern of
executive aggrandizement so carefully interwoven into the exposition of
Vineland" because he is blessed to be able to "use the historical keys
[Pynchon] has included in the novel" other readers and critics have suffered
a "failure to apprehend the historical depth the novel offers, and [a]
refusal to take seriously the endpoint of the history it relates." There's
some persuasive explication and documentation, but a lot of it is Thoreen's
rather than Pynchon's. I do agree with his take on Hector as a positive
character (as opposed to all those who wrote him off as an evil lunatic back
in the earlier chapters), and his stuff on Moody and the "domestic violence"
double entendre is astute and something I hadn't picked up on before.

best