Pynchon's politics, as exhibited in Vineland

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I agree: it's a memorable sentence.  I also liked his use of the phrase "feco-ventilatory collision."

-----Original Message-----
>From: Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Jul 26, 2006 3:49 PM
>To: kelber at mindspring.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Pynchon's politics, as exhibited in Vineland
>
>
>>The progressive political viewpoint in Vineland, as presented through the 
>>story of Frenesi and
>>her family history, was the best part of the book.  The other pop-culture 
>>TV, Japanese martial
>>arts, Cheech and Chong type sections were trite and uninteresting by 
>>comparison.
>
>I would have agreed with that statement after my first reading, with maybe a 
>small plea for the Zoyd/California episodes. I especially thought the 
>Japanese section was superfluous, but on the second reading I really enjoyed 
>those bits. For some reason, when I think of that part of the book I always 
>remember this:
>
>"By the time his life brought him here, down in the reeking beast-print, the 
>hazy red, green, and yellow lights and striped barricades, the struggling in 
>the mud and rain after a mystery that might at the end be only as simple as 
>greed, become at least independent, though Professor Wawazume still kept 
>sending a lot of business his way, no more corporate pin on his suit lapel, 
>only the buttonhole unadorned, lordless, his one fixed address now a cubicle 
>in outer Ueno he shared rent on, containing an armored file cabinet, a 
>telephone, and the signed, framed photo of himself the Professor had given 
>him when he left to go out on his own (an enlarged paparazzo shot, the 
>Professor looking even more goofy than usual, lurching after a noted beauty 
>in gold lame, flip hairdo, and two-centimeter eyelashes outside a bar in 
>Shinjuku, a lucent string of drool begun to descend from one corner of his 
>mouth), Takeshi had already long been a nomad in the sky's desert, 
>continuing to depart in kerosene fumes to seek another connection in another 
>Pacific port, to nod to faces he had last seen coming out of the Yat Fat 
>Building in Des Vœux Road, to check the body of the stewardess and what he 
>could see out the window of the body of the airplane, and at last, when they 
>began to lift, to commend himself to the gods of the sky."
>
>
>A classic example of one of Pynchon's massively long sentences, displaying 
>the 'nested clauses' that someone earlier today mentioned. There's a lot to 
>enjoy in this one quote, to maybe point to as examples of Pynchon's 
>particular genius, but what made it stick so firmly in my mind was the 
>humour - that "lucent string of drool" especially.
>
>Cheers
>JC
>
>