VL 'Stokely's dog' 49.1

[kelber at mindspring.com]

If the Wobblies had as big a role in Vineland as they do in your list, I'd be more inclined to love the book as much as you do.  The best parts of VL for me are the Traverse family recap and the 60s flashbacks to Frenesi and her betrayal of the collective.  But they're buried in a lot of stuff I like less:  The whole DL/Takeshi sequence and the the critique of pulp and TV pop culture just aren't all that interesting.  TRP's shooting at some pretty easy targets there, that have been picked pretty clean by critics and virtually anyone who's ever watched TV.  I kind of wish he'd carved the Traverse-Gates sequences from VL and ATD and shaped them into a separate book.  Although I enjoy his writing as much as ever, there's still a lesser density of asides and associations in this book that's disappointing compared to -- well, you know what I'm comparing it to.  I'm very willing to be convinced otherwise, though, by anyone who feels that all is for the best in the best of all possible Pynchon worlds.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>

>
>>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)