Vineland: Nitpicking for a fight with wikipedia

[Robin Landseadel]

As a concept of a sequential period of time, post WW2 is mostly  
postmodern.
Try "Catch 22" and "Slaughterhouse 5". Then there's the notion of  
revisionist
history. The story we're sold is that "the sixties" was a time of  
social foment
and incredible drugs. "Vineland" shows the central importance of  
Television
and Television generated products: Fruit Loops, Count Chocula, "designer
water" and "Made for TV" movies. Vineland also flips all those tales  
we were
taught from the tube, demonstrating just how far "the man" got into our
subconscious via cop shows and their ilk.

In my mind, Postmodern is post-God, at least the version of God we  
were taught
in Sunday School. Some time during the last month I realized that  
"Wicca" really
is more like a form of Postmodern Mysticism. Most self-described  
Wiccans I've
encountered have a mish-mosh of belief systems. This is definitely  
reflected in
Vineland, with what seems like good old western magic getting all  
mixed up
with Buddhist and other oriental mystical philosophies.

On top of all that, Vineland often comes off as the biggest, wildest  
"Simpsons"
episode evah.

On Dec 1, 2008, at 7:00 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:45 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> Described as 'postmodern' in wikipedia listing.
>>
>> How, besides that it was published AFTER modernism, does "Vineland"  
>> get called that?
>
> See, e.g., ...
>
> Totalizing Postmodernism: Master-narratives in Pynchon's Vineland
> By Bruce A. Sullivan
>
> http://www.themodernword.com/Pynchon/papers_sullivan.html
>
> On the other hand ...
>
> Palmeri, Frank.
> Other than Postmodern?--Foucault, Pynchon, Hybridity, Ethics
> Postmodern Culture - Volume 12, Number 1, September 2001
>
> http://www.muse.uq.edu.au/login?uri=/journals/pmc/ 
> v012/12.1palmeri.html
>
> ... but do note that for Jean-François Lyotard, at least, that "post"
> isn't necessarily chronological.  St. Augustine was "ppsotmodern"
> according to JFL ...
>