VL-are we ready for some sort of wrap-up?

[Joseph Tracy]

I find Robin's thoughts as satisfying and interesting as McConnel and  
I don't fully  agree that "Pynchon's point here is exactly that "the  
Movement" —remember when we all called it that? — was dead at the  
starting-gate, and was dead just because, secretly, it lusted after  
the same glittering prizes, the same gold cards, that the  
Establishment held."  This simply does not characterize the whole  
cross section of characters and it contradicts his later statement  
where he says "If no one else in our centers of power, then at least  
this one strange and lovely man continues to keep faith with the  
noisy and disruptive and underground idea of the republic." which is  
more how I read it. And at this point the peace movement, and the  
once hippyish sustainable energy movement, and the Eco movement and  
the human rights movements which are now all flying under the banner  
of the Progressive movement ( a word which isn't dead either)  are  
sounding better to a lot of Americans.

What McConnel is recording here is the difficulty of coming away with  
a unified response that adequately accounts for the literary experience.


>
On Apr 22, 2009, at 3:22 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> I'm calling it a wrap, strike the set.
>
> On Apr 22, 2009, at 9:35 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>
>> This was my second reading of VL and I can honestly say that the  
>> group read helped me appreciate the book a lot more than my first  
>> solo attempt.  So thanks, everyone.
>
> You're welcome, and I return my thanks to everybody as well.
>
> For what it's worth, I'm past counting how many times I've read  
> Vineland. The two books of Pynchon I've most obsessed over are  
> Vineland and The Crying of Lot 49, and for pretty much the same  
> reason. They describe places I've been, and in that description   
> these books transform those places. It's interesting how Frank  
> McConnell points to Raymond Chandler in his review of Vineland  
> [excerpts below], another writer with a gift for describing  
> California. San Narsciso is a place I've been and Vineland is a  
> place I've been.
>
> I spent my summer in Watts in 1966. I'm not sure when I first read  
> "A Journey into the Mind of Watts." But that image of the "Late,  
> Late Show:
>
> 	In one corner was this old, busted, hollow TV set with a rabbit-
> 	ears antenna on top; inside where its picture tube should have
> 	been, gazing out with scorched wiring threaded like electronic
> 	ivy among its crevices and sockets, was a human skull. The
> 	name of the piece was "The Late, Late, Late Show."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-watts.html
>
> . . . is as good a takeaway as any from Watts, 1966, plenty of  
> creative uses for destroyed objects in that place and time, very  
> much a testimony to the power of the ghost of Simon Rodia. And  
> similarly, Crying of Lot 49's San Narcisco reminds me of Ventura  
> County back in 1964/1966,  cleaner than L.A., still a bit of a  
> farming region but clearly:
>
> 	. . . less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts—
> 	census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping
> 	nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.
>
> . . . and as for the Transbay Terminal, just across the street from  
> "Fun Terminal" as you enter San Francisco from the Berkeley side.,  
> what can I say—he knows how to pick 'em. . .
>
> Garberville and parts north, like Arcada, are pretty much as  
> described in Vineland. Might seem like a limited perspective, but I  
> have walked so many of those steps in those times—All around L.A.  
> 1963/1968,  and centered in Berkeley but traveling all over  
> Northern California 1984/1999. I suspect I will have a very similar  
> response to "Inherent Vice" and have no doubt that it will overlap  
> with Vineland and "CoL49."
>
> Vineland feels like the most personal of the novels, and the first  
> where the characters are ". . .made luminous, undeniably authentic  
> by having been found and taken up, always at a cost, from deeper,  
> more shared levels of the life we all lead. . ." Even Vato & Blood,  
> tubalholics as much as Hector and clearly a set of rimshots off of  
> Cheech & Chong—they still jump from the pages, all these characters  
> have some wild hair up their ass that wasn't part of the scheduled  
> and authorized programming they got from the Tube and K-12.  
> Documenting that sort of innate tendency towards anarchy comes from  
> long observation and good descriptive abilities. The characters may  
> not be any more "real" or "round" than before but they are more  
> rambunctious. Then again, Vineland is deliberately more antic that  
> the previous books, more Mendelssohn than Bruckner.
>
>> Although every Pynchon book is "about" many things and subject to  
>> many interpretations and deconstructions (Heikki's latest e-mail  
>> about V was very thought-provoking), it's hard to resist the  
>> temptation to come up with some pat answer for someone who might  
>> ask:  "Vineland?  What's it about?"
>
> This is one of the best, and clearest, explanations I've read  
> concerning what Vineland's "about:
>
> 	. . . Pynchon's point here is exactly that "the Movement" —
> 	remember when we all called it that? — was dead at the
> 	starting-gate, and was dead just because, secretly, it lusted
> 	after the same glittering prizes, the same gold cards, that the
> 	Establishment held. Socialism may not be shared poverty, but
> 	neither is true revolution simply reversed dominance. . .
>
> http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php? 
> title=LA_Times_Review_-_Frank_McConnell
>
>> I might attempt to answer by saying that it's an exploration of  
>> how family and ideals and pop culture inform and distort each  
>> other.  The Traverse clan is caught in a tug of war between their  
>> political heritage and the lure of the Tube, somehow managing to  
>> adapt both to their family culture.  At the same time, pop culture  
>> takes on the Traverse family and their politics and adapts them to  
>> an acceptable form for popular consumption.
>
> Funny, now it's "The Traverse Clan", kinda making Vineland a time- 
> travelled prologue, "The Hobbit" to "Against the Day's" "Lord of  
> the Ring." Very interesting. . .
>
>> Personally, the DL/Takeshi sections were my least favorite,  
>> possibly because they didn't fit in with my narrowed view of what  
>> the book was "about."
>
> And I just loved them, though I guess that the DL/Takeshi story is  
> probably my favorite because it gets down to cases with karma, a  
> central theme in Pynchon's writing from here on through "Against  
> the Day." "Prairie Wheeler" = Prayer Wheel, as all of our hopes and  
> prayers for the next generation and the generations to follow fall  
> on the shoulders of that 14-year old girl. DL & Takeshi serve as  
> both guides—kind of a psychopomp, or a journey back in time—for  
> Prairie and provide examples of working out karma on a more extreme  
> and exaggerated scale, often to comic effect. Than again, maybe it  
> was Prairie's culinary choices at the Ninjette retreat that really  
> won me over. In any case, Prairie's tale is all wound up with the  
> tale of DL & Tasheki.
>
>> I'd guess that each of us has a very different view of what this  
>> book is about (Robin?).  Would love to hear them.
>>
>> Laura
>
>
> Vineland's also "About" the extraordinary way in which Television  
> seeped into our skins—"you're soaking in it!"—and  took over our  
> consciousness. I would cite the references in the book that point  
> back to the tube and the way these "characters" never seem to drop  
> character, how so much of their dialog either sounds like dialog  
> from the Tube or is a reference to the tube.
>
> If Gravity's Rainbow" is about "The Bomb," then Vineland is about  
> The Tube.
>
> After all that, I think the LA Times Review by Frank McConnell  
> previously cited offers the best explanation of what Vineland is  
> really all "about."
>
> 	Oh, yes-how does it all turn out? Well, you see, this is a sort of
> 	fairy tale, so of course everybody — including a lot of groovy
> 	people I haven't even told you about-winds up back in
> 	Vineland, and Vond is punished, and Prairie and Zoyd and
> 	Frenesi get together again ... sort of.
>
> 	And that's the point, too. No one writing now understands better
> 	than does Thomas Pynchon the potential for waste and disaster
> 	lurking in the corporate heart of America. And no one, I believe,
> 	hopes more hopelessly for The Happy Ending, the right end to
> 	the fable, where the generations embrace and the land
> 	blossoms. So that the last paragraph of Vineland — I really can't
> 	describe it for you — makes the whole of it either the saddest or
> 	the most optimistic story I know. If no one else in our centers of
> 	power, then at least this one strange and lovely man continues
> 	to keep faith with the noisy and disruptive and underground
> 	idea of the republic.
>
> 	And the morning the UPS man delivered my review copy of
> 	Vineland was the morning George Bush announced his
> 	invasion, for the most drug-free and ethically hygienic reasons,
> 	of Panama.
>
> http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php? 
> title=LA_Times_Review_-_Frank_McConnell