Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?

[Mark Kohut]

I think I'm saying that P presents Zoyd as still immature....too passive within his own life as we meet him, although, yes, as loveable as are so
many of P's schlemiels (as David says).....C'mon, loveable as he is, he has lived an acted-out lie all these years. 

A-and it may generalize to the theme of too many suchlike aging "hippies"
being part of the problem, as it used to be said, that leads to all that happens in Vineland. 

I think the jays, the creeping fig are a kind of poetic, imagistic rendering of the invasion by fascist-(like) forces--which is coming in the book-- because it comes in America without our vigilance, with our passivity, so to speak. 



--- On Wed, 12/3/08, Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>
> Subject: RE: Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?
> To: fqmorris at gmail.com, markekohut at yahoo.com
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Wednesday, December 3, 2008, 9:37 AM
> Hmmm. I have to admit, I'm not sure of what you're
> saying here, Mark.
>  
> Who, exactly, do you think is 'overidentifying'
> Zoyd with Pynchon?
>  
> And if Zoyd'd gotten off his arse (instead of his face
> eh?), and pruned that fig, and it therefore didn't creep
> through the window, then:
>  
> a) It wouldn't be there, as a symbolic signifier, in
> the sentence; and
> b) We readers would never know about it, would we?
>  
> Sheesh :-)
>  
>  
> <<
> Yes. Yes. 
>  
> I see Zoyd as in the tradition of Pynchon's schlemeils,
> the "whole sick crew", the young
> chums......loveable but (still)immature. 
>  
> To overidentify him with TRP himself is just wrong...(not
> least because we know from John Leonard's review that
> TRP had presented his BIG works-in-progress to grants
> committees before Vineland was even published....he always
> worked harder than his characters...)
>  
> And in this novel I think it does reflect on Zoyd and the
> book's themes
> that he is still a bit like that at his age....that
> 'creeping fig' should have been cut back a bit which
> is all it needs to NOT invade through a window. 
>  
> Still disorganized, sleeping late regularly, hunting his
> smokes and eating sugary 'kids' cereal. 
>  
> Mark
> >>
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