Vineland: Nitpicking for a fight with wikipedia

[Robert Mahnke]

In my mind at least, a key feature of post-modernist art is self-awareness and self-referentiality -- an acknowledgement of the artifice of the project. Viceland certainly goes there, starting with Zoyd's dive through a plate-glass window that isn't glass but candy, the better to simulate a dive through a glass window.  

-----Original Message-----
>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>Sent: Dec 1, 2008 10:38 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Vineland: Nitpicking for a fight with wikipedia
>
>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 ...
>>
>
>