VLVL "happy ending"?

[pynchonoid]

jbor:
>  she actively *wants* him to return
> and take her away 

The text doesn't support this reading. Prairie makes
her whispered offer to an Brock, after he was already
winched up and away from her, "suspecting already that
he was no longer available, that the midnight
summoning would go safely unanswered".   She doesn't
have to be afraid of Brock any more, she can play with
these hypnagogic fantasies, and she can do it back at
the scene of the attempted crime now that she has
demonstrated she has the power to tell him to fuck
off.

jbor:
> It's their negligence,
> self-deceit and
> selfishness, their collusion with their social and
> political oppressors,

Yeah, that's what you keep saying, and I'm still not
buying an interpretation that critiques these
characters in the hippie-hating terms of a
Nixon-Reagan-Bush worldview that the novel so
thoroughly undercuts. Considering how hard
Nixon-Reagan-Bush have worked to destroy this family,
through their agents Brock, Hector, and others, the
family has managed to survive and even thrive, keeping
alive core values of love and community,  with the
promise of a new generation coming up behind them. The
compromises they've been forced into, and the mistakes
they've occasionally made, pale in the face of the
criminal behavior of the agents of the State that set
them up then persecuted them unjustly. 

jbor:
> As a reflection on U.S. history in the 20th Century
> leading up to Reagan's
> re-election in 1984 _Vineland_ is indeed a scathing
> review of the failures
> and hypocrisy of "the left" in America

You keep saying this, too, ignoring the way that
Pynchon humanizes 60s rebels in a loving way, with
humor, understanding, sympathy.  What's scathing is
the novel's demonstration of the neofascist tendencies
of US governments during the Nixon-Reagan-Bush
administrations, the criminal behavior of police and
prosecutors, and the way the Tube has lulled just
about everybody into accepting this as normal and
desireable. 



	
		
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