VL 'Stokely's dog' 49.1

[Robin Landseadel]

On Dec 15, 2008, at 11:02 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

  . . . a lesser density of asides and associations in this book  
that's disappointing compared to -- well, you know what I'm comparing  
it to . . .

My guess is that would be Gravity's Rainbow. GR is certainly the  
bigger book, the issues are bigger, the scale is different, there's  
big-time looming threats to mankind's survival all over that master  
work. Vineland is of an altogether different scale. I really don't  
think TRP's powers of observation have lessened any, but I suspect  
that Pynchon is working a bit more locally here even though he's still  
thinking globally, looking and describing a tad more all the quotidian  
details of his life—or at least letting us know what's pissing him off  
at that particular moment.

In the best of all Pynchonian worlds there is room for this harmless  
little intraterrestrial scherzo—the best description anyone has come  
up with for Vineland so far, though I long to get my mitts on a copy  
of "The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth."

	. . . He put it down instead to stubbornness, plus drug
	abuse, ongoing mental problems, and a timidity,
	maybe only a lack of imagination, about the correct
	scale of any deal in life, drug or nondrug.

I'd say that the correct scale for a Drug & TV comedy a'la Rossini [in  
a mash-up with Orwell's "1984" and "Cheech & Chong"] would of  
necessity be smaller than that of a Wagnerian tragedy concerned with  
"long range defense systems", "The Bomb"  & and the leftover remains  
of the Theosophical movement towards the end of World War II. [Not to  
mention Sex & Drugs and what would have to pass for Rock & Roll in the  
mid-forties, starting with Charlie Parker.] And while it's true that  
many of the Tubal incidents seem of a very small scale, as usual there  
are levels and then there are levels. Again I cite DeLillo's "White  
Noise" as an example of an author who can use big themes in a big way,  
but can also scale back for something smaller and perhaps a tad more  
self-consciously "comic." Again, it's Rossini contre Wagner. The  
themes of Karma and Buddhism that are writ so large in Against the  
Day, are worth digging for in Vineland, where those themes are woven  
more invisibly into the background. Our beloved author is reaching for  
something a bit more personal in "Vineland" and I think for the most  
part he succeeds.  I'm dead cert that a very similar thing is going to  
happen in "Inherent Vice."

	They stood in the streetlight through the kitchen
	window there'd never been much point putting
	curtains over and listened to the thumping of the
	surf from down the hill. Some nights, when the
	wind was right, you could hear the surf all over
	town.