Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

VL, like ATD, doesn't have a real protagonist, which hampered my enjoyment of both books.  But the fact that VL opens with Zoyd can't be overlooked.  He may not be the protagonist, but he, like us, is an outsider looking in to the Traverse-Gates family and, if we're not meant to identify with him on a personal or lifestyle basis, I think we're meant to view the events in the book through his moral (counter-culture)lens.  The Chums of Chance open ATD, and serve a similar function in that book.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Ian Whitney <stickwhitney at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Dec 4, 2008 1:45 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Idle Zoyd, Crappy Vineland?
>
>
>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
>
>
>