Vineland

[jbor]

on 4/9/04 10:01 AM, jbor wrote:

> the novel in fact starts
> off with Zoyd Wheeler,

      Later than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd
    Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight [...]

> Pynchon's stereotype of a zany middle-aged hippie
> (who we quickly discover is a long-time welfare cheat),

    [...] his dream
    [...] almost surely connected with the letter that had come
    along with his latest mental disability cheqck, reminding him
    that unless he did something publicly crazy before a date now
    less than a week away, he would no longer qualify for benefits.
                   (Pynchon, _Vineland_, first page, first paragraph)

> 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.