aw. RE: aw. RE: I don't care which

[Robin Landseadel]

On Dec 2, 2008, at 4:44 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

> But there has to be a new context to open up another perspective!

If there's anyone to blame for these new group reads of Vineland and  
[coming
right up after these commercial breaks] The Crying of Lot 49, It's me.  
Vineland
has many ties to Against the Day and I'll bet that Inherent Vice will  
have many
connections to the Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland.

My "new perspective" concerning Vineland is a result of both the  
election we all just
witnessed and Vineland's relation to Against the Day. There will be  
plenty of time
to get into specifics as these re-readings progress [or devolve] but I  
was struck by
the deep relation of AtD's anarchist/activist threads to analogous  
threads in
Vineland. Of course, there's the obvious connection of the Traverse  
family.

I've been hovering around colleges and college folk for most of my  
adult life.
When Vineland came out I was working right across the street from  
Sproul Plaza.
The record store/cafe where I was working naturally attracted  
professors and
literary types---Ishmael Reed [biggest head I've ever seen] would use  
one of
the big window booths for one of his classes---so it was one of the  
few work
situations where a conversation with a total stranger concerning  
Pynchon was
even possible. Most of what I heard from these folk about Vineland was  
negative.
After GR, they all felt it was a let-down. I didn't, I felt it was  
very much of a piece
with GR, extending many of the same concepts but now " his touch becomes
lighter, funnier, more deadly," as Salman Rushdie put it in his NYT  
review of
Vineland---"Still Crazy After All These Years." TRP's targets included  
even more
obsessive leftists and professors. Maybe they thought that Pynchon was  
biting the
hands that fed him. I'm sure Weed Atman didn't boost the egos of the  
tenured class
nor did Frenesi Gates make any professional activists feel comfy.  
Being a child of
one of those "professional activists", the portrait of Frenesi and her  
film crew seemed
exactly on-point.

There are many here among us who feel that Pynchon's muse left him after
Gravity's Rainbow. I think he just got funnier and his targets more  
diverse.
In any case, you always have the option of deleting any message with  
"Vineland"
or "VL-IV" in the heading. I'm hoping to offer up new perspectives on  
both these
books and I think the key to understanding both Vineland and The  
Crying of Lot 49
is Television and its influence on culture and politics.