VL-IV Who was saved?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Maybe the real question, at the end of the book, anyway, is Who was saved by love?  Not Zoyd, by his love for Frenesi, but maybe Zoyd, for his love of Prairie?  TRP's final revelation that family is what's important (at a point in his life where he was changing from rootless hedonist to solid family man).

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: bandwraith at aol.com
>Sent: Dec 22, 2008 6:55 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: VL-IV Who was saved?
>
>Yes, and I'm wondering if Zoyd has any clue
>about Frenesi's rather sordid past by the time of
>their wedding, thinking he's going to save her
>from all that with his love? Re: his conversation
>to that effect with Van Meter.
>
>
>-----Original Message---------------------------------------
>From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Sent: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:08 am
>Subject: Re: VL-IV Who was saved?
>
>
>it IS obvious, and yet...as Hector mentioned, who WAS saved?  Love
>might be like a life-vest, but it has to be in stock, in working
>order, tossed, caught, deployed...
>
>also, Zoyd-then is present in the passage addressing Frenesi and
>trying as he speaks to mentally save a picture that Zoyd-now, also
>present, is trying to recapture and refresh  (no wedding photographer
>at the hippie wedding?) - but the point that I'm backing away from is
>receding further as I try to put it in words, fracturing into
>fragments
>a) nature of memory
>b) the way that life overruns the boundaries of the formalities - it's
>their wedding, but the moment dripping with emotion isn't the vows,
>it's this other question
>c) or maybe it's just him and people like him whose (messy) lives slop
>over the borders of lawfulness?
>d) or the reason he selects this memory is in response to Hector's
>question (like a development in a well made novel)
>
>