Vineland

[pynchonoid]

jbore can't get around the fact that the novel
mentions 1984 before it makes any critique of the 60s
counterculture. As I said, Pynchon gets around to that
later -- i.e., a secondary concern. And, the allusion
to Rip Van Winkle is speculative at best, while
references to Orwell's novel abound and have been
annotated extensively by Pynchon scholars like
yourself (only more pleasant, I expect), Pynchon-l
participants, and many other _Vineland_ readers. 

Your cranky smears of the 60s generation are beginning
to make you sound like the Dick Cheney or, better fit,
Zell Miller of Pynchon criticism. Get over it, dude.

jbore:
> Yes, despite the pynchorrhoid's selective editing

Well, I could have typed the whole novel, I guess, but
figured I'd save bandwidth and stop at "1984".  No
good deed goes unpunished, as usual. 

> the novel in fact starts
> off with Zoyd Wheeler, Pynchon's stereotype of a
> zany middle-aged hippie
> (who we quickly discover is a long-time welfare
> cheat)

That seems to be your biggest complaint about him. I
guess you've had problems with a Welfare Queen or two
somewhere down the pike.

> waking up like Rip
> Van Winkle after having slept through the past
> twenty years of his life, and
> of political time as well, during which era of
> complacency and "everyone for
> him/herself" the American republic had again
> embraced an oppressive
> conservatism which is in some way comparable, so
> Pynchon seems to be
> indicating, to that depicted in _1984_. Pynchon's
> historicist impulses lead
> him to focus on how the situation has come to be,
> rather than, as Orwell
> does, projecting a dystopian image of what could
> happen if ever state
> socialism gained a firm foothold.

Sounds like a reasonable distinction, and refreshingly
smear-free.  

=====
http://pynchonoid.org
"everything connects"


		
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush