VL-IV 1 Violence and Co-signs, pgs 19/21 98/99

[Robin Landseadel]

Isaiah’s big plans for his violence centers has hit one little snag:  
2/4’s [march-time, wouldn’t you know] parents are classic 60’s  
pacifists and they won't co-sign the loan that their son needs in  
order to set up shop.

Vineland is the Japanese Insurance Adjustor novel, thus DL and  
Takeshi. In both Against the Day and Vineland karma is a [the?]  
central theme. OBA gets downright specific with his Buddhist  
references in Against the day. There's plenty of arrows pointing to  
“The Compassionate” and Shambhala. The stories of good karma rewarded,  
that glimmer of hope, resonates in the two novels. Isaiah’s “Violence  
Centers” constitute a very nearly “you had to be there” kind of joke  
considering all the non-violence centers that rose up in the 60’s and  
expanded in the 70’s and 80’s. Applying the principles of Satyagraha  
to political action of all sorts is the center of non-violent  
pacifism, very much a by-product of the work of Ghandi via the Rev.  
Martin Luther King  which brings us back to Satyagraha and again to  
Karma.

I guess Pynchon had to reach a certain age to understand how the  
alternation of generations are a demonstration of karma. Punks are the  
natural next generation that would follow the freak iteration 1.0,  
genus hippie. It figures that Isaiah’s Parents are dedicated pacifists  
so it’s only natural that their son is a “violence enthusiast.”  As  
dedicated pacifists, funding a violence center would go counter to  
everything they believe in.

Zoyd, who [as you will see] spends a lot of time in the novel being  
chased and getting out of various scrapes with the law, somehow  
figures that Isaiah can hold his own among real mobsters so he sends  
Prairie and Isaiah “On the Road” with his blessings. Of course, by  
virtue of being “with the band” when Billy Barf and the Vomitones play  
up at the Wayvone’s wedding gig, Prairie hooks up with DL in the  
“ladies room”:

	She stared into her reflection, at the face that had always been
	half a mystery to her, despite photos of her mother that Zoyd
	and Sasha had shown her. It was easy to see Zoyd in her face
	—that turn of chin, slope of eyebrows - but she'd known for a
	long time how to filter these out, as a way to find the face of her
	mother in what was left. She started picking again at her hair, with
	a coral plastic ratting brush a friend had shoplifted for her. Mirrors
	made her nervous, especially all these, each set over a marble
	sink with mermaids for tap handles, in a space lit like a bus station,
	walls covered in gold velvet with a raised heraldic pattern, pink and
	cream accents everyplace, a fountain in the middle, some
	scaleddown Roman repro, concealed speakers playing FM stereo
	locked to some easy-listening frequency in the area, seething
	quietly, like insect song. . .

	. . .Suddenly, then, behind herself, she saw another reflection,
	one that might've been there for a while, one, strangely, that she
	almost knew. . .
	VL, pgs. 98/99

. . . and the big prayer wheel starts to turn but meanwhile we’re left  
babysitting Zoyd, sitting alone with his thoughts about to U-turn to  
flashbacks of the Hector and Zoyd show, lighting a joint by the now  
silenced Tube:

	. . . as a problem to be addressed, Isaiah was more like a vacation
	from deeper difficulties, chief among which, all of a sudden, was
	the recrudescence of Hector Zuniga in Zoyd's life, a topic, as he lit
	a joint and settled in front of the soundless Tube, that his thoughts
	unavoidably found their way back to.
	VL, pg 21

This somehow reminds me of Oedipa after reading her letter from Warpe,  
Wist-full, Kubitschek and McMingus:

	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. . .

	. . .You're so sick, Oedipa, she told herself, or the room, which knew.
	The Crying of Lot 49, pgs. 1/2