Honest To Toby

[Tim Strzechowski]

"Interesting" or not, I challenge anyone to find a passage in this novel
that portrays Reagan-era politricks, corporate America, the CIA, or anything
government-related in a sympathetic light.

In contrast, Pynchon gives us a boatload of scenes and passages that show
Zoyd et al in all their glorious looniness, but there is an occasional
sympathy in the authorial tone, whether it be nostalgic or a sense of pathos
forz an era that didn't live up to its potential.

Does Pynchon, anywhere in his novels, present a sympathetic tone when
showing the reader a beaurocracy of *any* kind?




>
> The thesis that Vineland is a pro-Reagan novel is as uninteresting as
> caricaturing it as a left-wing novel.
>
> Robbing his writings of their looniness is criminal.
>
> It is, of course, a stretch to find (e.g.) the imagery of "window
> crashing for food" a bit loony. I'll try to get myself in line.
>
>