Zoyd the moderate

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Monroe [mailto:monropolitan at yahoo.com]

> "It was not a case of either/or, but an expansion of
> possibilities.  I don't think we were consciously
> groping after any synthesis, although perhaps we
> should have been.  The success of the 'new left' later
> in the '60's was to be limited by the failure of
> college kids and blue-collar workers to get together
> politically.  One reason was the presence of real,
> invisible class force fields in the way of
> communication between the two groups." (SL, "Intro,"
> p. 7)
> 

I think that theme is strong in Vineland.  And may be why I like Vineland so much.  I was personally drawn to the anti-war and non-violence of the new left as a high school student - as were many - but then repelled by the violence and factionalism, to the point of becoming apolitical.

Frenesi herself could have been college material ("You could have gone to college on what that bastard will always owe me!" -sez her dad) but wasn't; 

Vineland shows so beautifully why radical politics (who's that Porsche-loving guy who conceived of revolution as a series of ascetic sacrifices?) will never appeal to life-loving Zoyd trying to make ends meet, loving Frenesi but not embracing either her ur-politics or her later snitchery...in fact his only nexus of aggravation with the State as he minds his business is their prohibition of a favorite meditative aid

if (as suggested in one of the Hollander articles) an important associative threads related to Zoyd is Progressive US politican named Burton Wheeler, then his tale is interesting since he suffered attacks both from the right and from the left.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j090501.html has a lot of interesting info on Wheeler's career.

relating Zoyd to "the voice of reason" as embodied by Wheeler's political activities leads me to believe that Pynchon - who certainly was in a number of feeder groups for leftist radical activities - had life experiences convincing him that compassion militates against the radical politics of all stripes

> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72410

nice post, too.  "With this partial substitution of Freud for Marx
as a source of social theory, sadism rather than selfishness has become the principal target of the Left."  the genesis of po-mo!