aw. RE: Media Edukation

[Mark Kohut]

Seconded. Thirded.

Is Home arrived at too easily in Vineland? Is it ironically attained. 

Good book on the meaning of American Lit was called Home as Found.  
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Having said all that, and acknowledging that what we are reading is very much a satire—we are meant to laugh—there is still a paranoid aspect to Vineland's concept of the Tube as a delivery system of propaganda that has been altogether too successful. It's in the book's design, the way all these tales managed to get their respective happy ends, give or take an act of R.I.C.O., or two. Vineland is soaked in Television.

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.