Scarlet Vineland

[Richard Ryan]

Looking back over the uneven but magnificent lollapalooza that is VINELAND, I'm find myself becoming aware of the way in which it repeatedly echoes THE SCARLET LETTER. A-and it makes sense that monstrously ambitious TP would - following his tour de force re-writing of MOBY DICK as GRAVITY'S RAINBOW - take a whack at the OTHER Great American Novel template, the second of our exemplary national books being authored by a novelist who has, as HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES FANS can testify, an especial resonance for Pynchons and Pynchonians everywhere.  There are a number  of inter-connections worth exploring, but here, in keeping with a running joke of VL's final chapter, is the Movie of the Week version:

Frenesi Gates as Hester Prynne

Prairie Wheeler at Pearl

Brock Vond as Roger Chillingworth 

Weed, Zoyd, and Flash rotating in an out as Dimmesdale (Weed and Brock's rivalry recapitulates the Arthur-Roger opposition in powerful but ragged approximation, methinks...)