Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?

[Ian Whitney]

I have typically accepted Prairie as the protagonist because she is the one who is allowed to "roam free" by the end of the novel. After learning the identity of her mother and accepting her mother for who she is, Prairie achieves self-actuation.
Kathryn Hume's Mythography describes the myth's that Pynchon destroys and redefines.  Zoyd's hippie hero is no exception, but the alternative view of family prevails in the end.  Prairie is part of a larger assertion that the concept of "family" has and continues to evolve, but the members of that family need not be dysfunctionial or paranoid.  
 

--- On Thu, 12/4/08, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?
To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Date: Thursday, December 4, 2008, 2:34 AM

yeahbut...
I'll buy her as stencilizer, but who undergoes the most agony
(childbirth, betrayal, postpartum depression, the dissolution of her
cadre, imprisonment)?
Frenesi - therefore, by spurious etymology, she's the protagonist.

Who changes?  Again, Frenesi.  Several times.   Zoyd pits the same
character against different situations...Prairie's gradual maturation
is attractive...but that Frenesi, man, she goes thru some changes.  It
seems to me.

Who embodies the conflicts in the book most tellingly?  ....engages
with the heat, the Man in the incarnations of BV, DL and even um the
narc boyfriend (Flash?) - again Frenesi.

Whose progress through all the hysteron proterons can be fitted to a
normal life curve?  Frenesi...we have huge gaps with Zoyd and not a
word about his parents...

What Zoyd offers to her - escape (respite and nepenthe) - is what he
offered Takeshi in the airliner - sonic coverage...he's the guardian
of a door or escape hatch or gate of some kind to be sure...

And a warm welcome back to John Carvill.  Didn't mean to let that go
unremarked.



On 12/3/08, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> I tend to think of Prairie as the books
> protagonist/quester/stencilizer.
>
>  Zoyd seems like Tyrone, un-disappeared, now grown up and with a kid.
>
>  Frenesi is the object of the quest, Vineland's "V."
>
>  And I don't know Rob Jackson [unless he's the Robert Jackson
>  of S.F.E.M.S., which I doubt] but I appreciate what he had to say
>  about the books opening passage.
>
>
>  On Dec 3, 2008, at 7:13 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:
>
>
> > even though the book opens with Zoyd, I'm inclined to think of
Frenesi
> > as the protagonist.
> >
> > And though I love the book, I'm very glad to see Mr Jackson
posting again.
> >
>


-- 
--
"Certainly this cookbook is for people who are not so neurotically
antiauthoritarian as I am - to whom one can say, "Take the juice of
one lemon," without the furious response: "Is that a direct
order?" -
Grace Paley



      
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