Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Zoyd is the standard-bearer of Timothy Leary's call to (in)action: turn on, tune in, drop out.  As such, he's maintained his moral purity, his "technical virginity" at a time where working-class dives are becoming yuppified, when radicalism's becoming co-opted and commercialized.  It's a moral stance, not a sign of idleness or immaturity.  Sleeping "late" doesn't have any meaning for those who refuse to buy into the 9-5 world.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Dec 3, 2008 10:05 AM
>To: fqmorris at gmail.com, Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: RE: Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?
>
>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
>> >>
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> You live life online. So we put Windows on the web. 
>> http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/127032869/direct/01/
>
>
>