Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?

[Robin Landseadel]

I dunno, thought Jbor's comments were real interesting even if I don't  
agree with all of them.

Extend those metaphors on the opening page---we are led to find Zoyd  
sleeping "later than usual". There's a creeping fig creeping covering  
over a late morning sun that's attempting to wake the sluggard up.  
Everything in the kitchen and backyard suggests that Zoyd's been  
pulling a Rip van Winkle for years and years. And Thomas Pynchon's  
publishing schedule suggests the same.

I agree that Zoyd Wheeler is a parody of Thomas Pynchon, much like  
Tyrone Slothrop. Slow Learner came out in 1984. The intro, evasive as  
it may be, is the closest we have to a Thomas Pynchon autobiography  
[though Pynchon's introduction to Richard Farina's "Been Down So Long  
It Looks Like Up to Me, issued in 1983, fills in a few more blank  
spots.] There's plenty of self-loathing in that little essay on how  
not to write.

I've read Vineland more than most people largely for the same reason  
I've read The Crying of Lot 49 more than just about anybody---it  
overlaps with my life a bit too much.

In any case, everybody here has to have their least favorite book by  
Pynchon and for most people, that book is Vineland. If someone wants  
to contribute to the group read of Vineland with actual criticism, I  
welcome it. Given enough time, it might turn out to be Againist the  
Day that lands at the bottom of everybody’s list. Meanwhile:

	Their fateful decision to land would immediately embroil them in the  
byzantine
	politics of the region, and eventually they would find themselves  
creeping
	perilously close to outright violation of the Directives relating to  
Noninterference
	and Height Discrepancy, which might easily have brought an official  
hearing, and
	perhaps even disfellowshipment from the National Organization. For a  
detailed
	account of their subsequent narrow escapes from the increasingly  
deranged
	attentions of the Legion of Gnomes, the unconscionable connivings of  
a certain
	international mining cartel, the sensual wickedness pervading the  
royal court of
  	Chthonica, Princess of Plutonia, and the all-but-irresistible  
fascination that
	subterranean monarch would come to exert, Circe-like, upon the minds  
of the
	crew of Inconvenience (Miles, as we have seen, in particular),  
readers are
	referred to The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth---for some  
reason
	one of the less appealing of this series, letters having come in from  
as far away
	as Tunbridge Wells, England, expressing displeasure, often quite  
intense, with
	my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo.
	AtD, pg 117

On Dec 3, 2008, at 1:00 AM, Carvill John wrote:

Some good replies to my original 'sunlight' query, thanks.

I note, with a shudder, that a certain old-time p-lister is back, and  
dissing Zoyd, Vineland and Pynchon yet again.  
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20081203/c9e4b313/attachment-0001.html>