VL 'Stokely's dog' 49.1

[Michael Bailey]

>I'll probably kick off my host comments tomorrow with a nutshell of
>the other reasons why I love it.

putting them in outline form.  I like Vineland because it has the
following characteristics (the question of why I like these
characteristics is a different issue, not unrelated, but one which is
to my theses as Goedel's theorem is to Russell's arithmetic)  The
outline is ad hoc and tentative but reflects the best I can do today

1) The main thing that it seemed like to me (and maybe this isn't even
true or what OBA intended) was a testament to human endurance and a
sense that if you keep slogging you may or may not eventually get
somewhere worthwhile but at least you'll have some interesting
experiences

- a) if you make it thru Vineland you get to the family reunion of the
anarcho-syndicalists which for me brings to mind the Faulkner quote "I
believe mankind will not only survive but prevail"
- b) of course, that brings to mind the other Faulkner quote "I don't
know what that passage means, I was drunk when I wrote it" which ties
into the difficulty of preserving the insights gained through
religious experience (thanks to William James' generous inclusion of
intoxication in that category)

2) specifically proletarian human endurance ("the indispensable
proles" mentioned in the 1984 review)

- a) discuss the attractiveness of the Wobblies, conceivably, for OBA
to include them in the ontology of Vineland since they recur as
steadily as a bass line in the book

     1) the main attraction of the Wobblies was a sort of Quixotic
idealism and an egalitarianism that kept them alert and alive to
society's underdogs

     2) the two main attractions of the Wobblies were a naive Quixotic
sweetness, an egalitarianism that made them reach out to groups
ignored by craft unions (blacks, foreigners, unskilled, migratory and
          even the unemployed), and the fact that they preferred
direct action over political action meant that it took them less time
to figure out the Russian Revolution was starting to suck than other
lefties (about the time Lenin rescinded "all power to the Soviets" I
think, although one of the IWW main dudes jumped bail and drank
himself to death in Moscow - still that was more of a personal choice
for him than an institutional endorsement)

     3) the three main attractions of the IWW were a sweet Quixotic
naivete, a permanent outreach to the downtrodden (and consequent
relegation to the ranks of the preterite themselves), rejection of
political solutions, and they won big free speech court battles

    4) the 4 main attractions of the IWW as a major player in a
Pynchon book are Quixotism, paid-up dues in the Preterite,
apoliticalism (direct action, unco-optability), free speech court
battles, and the fact that their main tenet ("The working class and
the employing class have nothing in common"
http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml) if taken literally
creates an "us and them" situation, shatters univocity, removes the
possibility of peaceful solutions, and sets the stage for, in fact
almost insures, trouble and, thus, conflict, which they (They?) tell
me is an indispensable ingredient in a good story. Though the
statement echoes unpublicized attitudes implicit in the actions of
plutocrats and robber barons to this day, still, that's only a subset
of employers, and it's wrong to assume the worst, isn't it?

  b) but not just Labor as in organized labor, but the proletarian
experience itself.
     i) if in V. lumpen-Benny surveyed a world in which the foreman of
his pick-up job killing alligators tried to instill the pride in
workmanship that theoretically could animate a politically active,
conscientious working class and failed due to the propensity of
workers to prefer mindless pleasures over workplace democracy, in
Vineland, musician-who-can't-even-get-a-regular-day-job-let-alone-quit-it-Zoyd
traverses a landscape where he is drawn close to people who have not
surrendered their championship of said worker's autonomy despite the
costs and yet because of filial love are forced to compromise in order
to survive and provide for their loved ones, gaining a valuable
perspective forged in suffering, and built brick-by-brick from
constant small but important measures taken in resistance to despair,
because he's in love with Frenesi who is one of them.  His basically
aesthetic and personalist outlook makes him more or less immune to
their recruiting efforts which appeal to class consciousness - that
valence shell in him is filled by a sense of  himself as a musician -
but he's emotionally open to them as people, loyal to them because of
their importance to Frenesi, and in need of their help as Prairie's
extended family.

    ii) other conditions of life as "not part of the dominant
subgroup" - pickup jobs, interesting domiciles and neighborhoods,
slang and (the thing I like the best) motherwit, physicality and
self-reliance giving proles great freedom even within their
constraints

   iii) a closeness to Nature, the natural world which of course gives
rise to beautiful prose

3) also marriage and family and love play an important part in the
book's ontology

4) and the free market
    a) even the small amount of lip service Reagonomics paid to free
market principles was enough to eliminate Vond as a threat
    b) even the violence around the unconstrained free-market praxis
of Ralph Wayvone doesn't prevent Zoyd from relishing the eats when he
can and even sending his daughter to a Wayvone social event

5) the opportunity to consider DL and Takeshi in comparison with and
contrast to Zoyd and Frenesi; the opportunity to observe the depiction
of said foursome and their milieu

6) the awakenings - Zoyd's at the beginning, Frenesi's progress,
Prairie's and the generic one performed by the Traverses and Beckers
at the end - inspire imitation (face trouble, go to your meetings,
sort of thing)

7) The Puncutron and, to a lesser extent, other instances of magical realism

8) all the erudition and references and the sense that I'm being, as
was Prairie, "like a basketball after an NBA game, bounced by experts"
(or words to that effect)