aw. RE: Media Edukation

[kelber at mindspring.com]

There's a general consensus (I think?) that TRP's later books VL, M&D and ATD are the happy family books.  They're more focussed on family, though I'm not convinced that any of them really has a "happy ending."  I think Robin's right that VL is at least loosely structured on the sit-com, tidy wrap-up format, and is parodying it to some extent.  With Prairie dispatching Vond and immersed in the warmth of her family, is Pynchon winking at us and saying:  "Not so fast -- this is tube-formula happiness.  And now a word from reality..."?

The world is as mad and irrational a place at the end of VL, M&D and ATD as it is at the end of GR.  But where Slothrop  disintegrates, the characters (collective protagonists) of the later books find some sort of collective solace with friends and family.  Not so different from what any of us do, I'd guess.  Are they/we better off than Slothrop?  He did get that kazoo solo gig - must have been kind of fun.  Retreating into family is easy and comfortable (if annoying), but it's a kind of pat, sit-com-worthy response when the going gets tough.  Maybe we could call the VL and post-VL books Pynchon's "unhappy family" period.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>

>What really matters, in this family drama, is that somehow, we find  
>our way home. We all know where home is, but we all know that "home"  
>is slipping away. At the same time, from Vineland on, Family becomes a  
>major theme and many of the characters are a far turn from the  
>isolates of the earlier works. Family figures in Slothrop's tale, but  
>mainly as shadow. What little sense of family Oedipa Maas has is being  
>broken down the further she investigates Tristero. "V." is full of  
>isolated yo-yos. But Vineland has a lot to say about family & the  
>sorts of "happy endings" we learned from the Tube. As does Against the  
>Day.