Vineland

[jbor]

on 4/9/04 11:07 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)

N.B. "reminding him that unless *he did* something publicly crazy ... he
would no longer qualify for benefits."
> 
>> 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.

best