VL-IV Un-Pop culture

[Robin Landseadel]

[Hits imaginary buzzer]
". . . I'm sorry Mr. Wraith, the correct answer is "Wachet Auf",  
Johann Sebastian Bach's Cantata Bwv # 140 :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wachet_auf,_ruft_uns_die_Stimme

. . . a work concerning resurrection and thus relevant to the  
Thanatoids awakening—or perhaps finally freed from ghostly limbo. Not  
to mention the whole "Hector's Aria" set-up with its embedded  
reference to the wild Gypsy Carmen.

The tune was somehow embedded in a microchip, set to play [as the plot  
would have it] just as "Reaganomics" erased Brock Vond's mission from  
the hard drive of the Feds, leaving no more funds for Vond's sick  
fantasies.

The author is up to his usual tricks after all.

But you are right about the inundation of Tubal references, how [more  
than any other work] low culture swamps high culture in Vineland*.  
This reminds me a great deal of DeLillo's "White Noise [1985], with  
it's highly mannered narration, a kind of "Collegiate Speak," just as  
artificial and damaging as 1984's "newspeak." The "newspeak" of  
Vineland is The Tube, where it is also the released gas from "White  
Noise," permeating everything.


On Dec 31, 2008, at 8:50 AM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

>  No Botticelli, Beethoven, or
> any of the other high culture references so prominent in
> the novels that preceded VL- not even a cartoon or a
> kazoo version.

*a-a-a-and don't forget the onslaught of low culture references in all  
of Pynchon.