Viceland, page 3

[Robin Landseadel]

I like "Viceland", think I'm gonna keep it. Being as I'm reading about  
fools
whose general levels of inherent vice ought to be really high right now,
Vineland seems more retrospective than ever. Zoyd "groaned out of bed."
I know I'm beginning to creak when I get up.

Seeing as Dave Monroe has sent along a month's worth of postings
within the last 5 hours, I've been reading and responding to responses.
But, crawling along on my belly like a reptile, an attempt to move  
forward
is forged, far out on the western plain:

       ". . .In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from  
someplace far
         across the ocean, landing and taking off again one by one, each
         bearing a message for him, but none of whom, light pulsing in  
their
         wings, he could ever quite get to in time. He understood it  
to be
         another deep nudge from forces unseen, almost surely connected
         with the letter that had come along with his latest mental- 
disability
         check, 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. . ."

         ". . .He understood it to be another deep nudge from forces  
unseen. . ."

Great, typical line. Pynchon's interest and involvement with psychic and
occult phenomenon is almost always being swept under the rug, there
being more intellectually credible diversions nearby to distract us.

A little loop that might mean more to me than to you:

        " . . . almost surely connected with the letter that had come  
along with
        his latest mental-disability check . . ."

I knew this woman from the renaissance faire who was getting ssi money  
in
1980 by "acting crazy", otherwise gainfully employed [under the  
counter] as
a much-in-demand costume maker both for Faire brats and the theatrically
under-employed. This lady lived in the Haight during its famous  
transmutation
from Hippie Heaven to Scag Central.  Charming lady, really. A palm- 
reader.

The overlap of these psychic types and Fairefolk is well documented---

http://www.lelandra.com/comptarot/tarotsca.htm

Before fortune telling became generally legal*, the Faire was the  
place you
would go to read cards or have your aura read. It was, really early  
on, also
a place you'll go to smoke a bit of stuff and not get hassled. It had  
other
'hippie' virtues, early on when a significant number of us thought  
that Tolkien
was channeling God and if we really, really acted good we might be elves
& fairies someday..

In any case, early on, catching an SSI gig was a freak scam in progress
in that great arena of time and space covered by Vineland.

* Diana Paxson founded the SCA soon after.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_L._Paxson