VL 'Stokely's dog' 49.1

[Rob Jackson]

'Trent, a sensitive poet-artist from the city: " ... somebody said  
they shot Stokely's dog ..."' (48-9)

http://www.interchange.org/Kwameture/nytimes111698.html

Zoyd's deal is indeed just like a novelist's lot; and a bit like a dog  
having to sing for his supper. But Zoyd's clearly into his '15 minutes  
of fame' as well and is teetering just on that precarious edge between  
disguise, or anonymity, and exhibitionism - whether 'its, uh, a Calvin  
Klein original' or, say, a paper bag over his head.

I'm not sure that it's clear that Zoyd actually 'deserves' to be paid  
a social security benefit. And I'm not even sure that the novel  
endorses Zoyd's legitimate receipt of that social security benefit.  
Dude, just get a job!

In the short stories and novels there's generally a character (or  
three) through whom the autobiographical impulse and narrative voice  
are filtered, to varying degrees and often self-consciously and/or  
parodically so: 'Lardass' Levine, Cleanth Siegel, Dennis Flange,  
Meatball Mulligan, Benny and Stencil, Oedipa, Tim Santora,  
Slothrop ... Zoyd. (They're generally characters who don't reappear.)

That authentic sense of time and place is one of the things which  
Pynchon's writing doesn't get enough credit for (and it's ofttimes the  
product of research as much as of actual experience); but it will be  
interesting to see how the new novel rewrites Pynchon's time on the  
west coast during the 60s, and to make the comparisons with the two  
earlier works. Both Lot 49 and Vineland are critical of the 60s  
student left but from different vantages and on different counts.  
(They're obviously more critical of the authoritarian right, but  
that's a given.)

I'm with those who like Hector, and I think Zoyd likes Hector too, and  
vice versa (just like Sylvester and Tweetie-Pie and the Skipper and  
Gilligan). Each of the adult characters is likeable - even Brock  
arouses some pity - but they're all flawed in some respects too, even  
DL.

Where the novel falls down for me is that the bits that are meant to  
be funny are just not that funny. Sometimes in Vineland the cartoonish  
elements which are a Pynchon staple are too overloaded with  
'significance' and not 'exuberant' enough ... guess I'm just a sucker  
for a custard pie fight in a hot-air balloon for a custard pie fight  
in a hot-air balloon's sake ...

vaya con dios


On 14/12/2008, at 7:00 PM, pynchon-l-digest wrote:

> Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2008 07:16:49 -0800
> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: VL-IV [1/2]: Handoff + Time/Place pg. 22
>
> SSi was a small stipend for the un-employable. Social Security Online
> sez:
> 	SSI makes monthly payments to people who have low income and few
> resources and are:
>
> 	• Age 65 or older;
> 	• Blind; or
> 	• Disabled.
> 	http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/11000.html
>
> Being "crazy" was considered a disability. I knew one SSI recipient
> who was certifiable and another who was a good actress. "Being Crazy"
> for a living is rather Orwellian, like the fate of Soviet dissidents.
>
> Of course in Vineland we can consider the possibility that the goings
> on are more autobiographical than usual. It's one of the rules of the
> game that Pynchon himself is inaccessible* and discussion of his life
> is off-limits. On the other hand, those of us who've been following
> this story for a long time know that the author was living in
> California, north-ish during the time of Vineland, southward during
> The Crying of Lot 49. Inherent Vice is [apparently] set between those
> two times and places.
>
> I just know that Richard Farina is going to play into this somehow.
>
> The jump-through-window, get yearly stipend ritual can be equated with
> the insanity of maintaining a life as a novelist---the rounds of
> interviews, the disruption of an otherwise private life,  being tied
> to the system by becoming an Instructor at a College. I guess at the
> time it really boiled down to the Freak/Straight divide—whether you're
> working to maintain the machine, working for "The Man".  I can
> remember dinner table talk, I can remember time and place.
>
> Pynchon's writing on 1984 [the novel] is worth reading on its own
> merits:
>
> http://www.themodernword.com/Pynchon/pynchon_essays_1984.html
>
> The introductions to Slow Learner and TRP's memories of Richard Farina
> in his introduction to "Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me" were
> written around 1984 and are his most autobiographical writings. Of
> TRP's novels Vineland seems to have the most autobiography, although
> there's some beautiful passages in Lot 49 that really capture time and
> place:
>
> 	Like many named places in California it was less an
> 	identifiable city than a grouping of concepts---
> 	census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts,
> 	shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to
> 	its own freeway. But it had been Pierce's domicile,
> 	and headquarters: the place he'd begun his land
> 	speculating in ten years ago, and so put down the
> 	plinth course of capital on which everything
> 	afterward had been built, however rickety or
> 	grotesque, toward the sky; and that, she supposed,
> 	would set the spot apart, give it an aura. But if there
> 	was any vital difference between it and the rest of
> 	Southern California, it was invisible on first glance.
> 	CoL49, 13/14 Perennial Classics Edition.
>
> The opening of Vineland's next chapter is full of time/place  
> specifics:
>
> 	. . .generations of paint jobs in different beach-town
> 	pastels, corroded by salt and petrochemical fogs
> 	that flowed in the summers onshore up the sand
> 	slopes, on up past Sepulveda, often across the then
> 	undeveloped fields, to wrap the San Diego Freeway
> 	too. Down here, a long screened porch faced out
> 	over flights of rooftops descending to the beach.
> 	VL, page 22