ATDTDA (18): intro

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

             Laura:
             I find the Cambridge sequences excruciatingly 
             over-cute --some of my least favorite parts of 
             the book.  I guess it's supposed to be 
             Wodehouse or Waugh-style?  Never read them.

Guess it's because I've always been simply daft for Eric Blore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9fHz8fOIPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kIPv3v4Mng&mode=related&search=

But please remember, in this historical dismemberment that we are 
attempting to decipher, there are anachronisms a-plenty and the Movies 
figure big in AtD's meta-narrative. There is much to do with the birth of 
pulp fiction in all these narratives on display in AtD, and eventually the 
book's plot[s] swing[s] on over to Hollywood for the novel's big finish. 
Kinda like "Blazing Saddles".

It all points to 

             Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the 
             greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the 
             name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible. 
             But this did not work.

Invoking God via the tube, as if waiting for the tube to provide the 
answer, like a scryer before a globe of iceland spar. . . .

>From "Television and Literature: David Foster Wallace's Concept of 
Image-Fiction, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Thomas Pynchon's 
Vineland:

http://home.foni.net/%7evhummel/Image-Fiction/chapter_4.1.1.html

[. . . .this is a really serious and well considered piece, pointing out how 
personal interaction with television is a central theme in major-league 
examples of postmodern literature.]

             In a similar vein as Klepper, Brian McHale states that 
             "the very world of Vineland, the outside 'real world' 
             existing independently of any particular character's 
             consciousness of it, is itself modeled on TV."(123) 
             He perceives that the world of Vineland is partitioned 
             into various "regions" and associated with certain 
             televisual genres which again are grouped around 
             certain characters in the novel. So whenever Zoyd 
             Wheeler is the center of the fictional world, this world 
             seems to function according to sitcom-logic, Brock 
             Vond transforms everything around him into a cop-show, 
             and Frenesi and Flash live under soap opera 
             circumstances. Each genre-world functions with a 
             different set of psychological, sometimes even 
             physical laws and norms. McHale's metaphor for 
             the rapid and often imperceptible switching between 
             these worlds is zapping. . . .

             . . . .In Vineland, Pynchon is interested less in perceptual 
             processes than in the ideological underpinnings of film 
             and television. Therefore, he not only represents the 
             consumption-side of images, but also the production 
             process, similar to Wallace in "Little Expressionless 
             Animals". The failure of the revolutionary film collective 
             24fps, of which Frenesi was a part, allows him to 
             investigate some of the ideological complexities 
             surrounding all visual media. Zoyd's curious 
             transfenestration which opens up the book is also 
             concerned with the production side of television and its 
             controlling power over individuals and reality in general. 
             As will become clear in this chapter, the filming of Weed's 
             death can be understood as the starting point of a 
             development leading directly to Zoyd jumping through a 
             window made of clear sheet candy. . . . 

[. . . .and I have to interject here with glass window/clear 
sheet candy/television screen/computer display/iceland spar—and
the difference between being on one side of the 'glass' or the other. . . .]

                                              . . . . Both instances show 
             how reality is not simply mirrored in the filming of it, but 
             actually shaped and controlled. Ultimately, the managed 
             version of reality serves Brock Vond and no one else 
             which again indicates that Pynchon's book is concerned 
             with questions of power and politics. . . .

             Perhaps the most striking similarity between the three discussed 
             works is the way in which the TV screen is represented as a kind 
             of permeable boundary. The TV keeps company, it wards off 
             fears, it entertains. Alas, these mindless pleasures seem to have 
             their price: in all three works the televisual world impinges on 
             the real one. In Wallace's story most people have become 
             "Little Expressionless Animals". They are not concerned with the 
             complex emotions of others or themselves anymore but only with 
             easily consumable surfaces. In White Noise, the televisual and the 
             real meet in Jack Gladney's consciousness. In his mind he 
             conceptualizes reality in media terms, where everything he 
             perceives carries the traces of familiar media representations. 
             In Vineland, the boundary between real and televisual space is 
             even more permeable. Not only are the minds of its characters 
             deeply influenced by TV, but the "real" world of Vineland itself 
             is invaded by TV. Its physical laws often resemble the rules of 
             certain TV genres, and televisual figures can be seen to 
             enter reality. 

Against the Day represents the world before Television, but everything in 
the book is filtered by the conventions of Television, much like in Vineland,
the character's world ascribes to the rules of whatever genre dominates
the storylines of each character. Although the Firesign Theater seems
like an ephemeral and trivial point of reference, what goes on in "Don't
Touch That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers" or "Roller Maidens from Outer 
Space" applies with a vengeance here: episodes with abrupt shifts in style,
tone, vocabulary and every now and then a quodlibet-like effect of 
juxtaposing or integrating seemingly opposing elements like a vocal
quintet from a comic opera—Rossini, perhaps—or maybe just channel-
surfing on a remarkably serendipitous day with a dazzling program
line-up of cable offerings, skipping from "The Good,The Bad, and 
The Ugly" to "The Gay Divorce", and right on the beat, to boot.