VL/Politics - This Is Where We Came In

[John Carvill]

Just been back to have a look at the discussion of Vineland that went
on around the time I joined this list, back in 2003. A lot of posts
flew back and forth on the subject of whether Vineland is a 'political
novel' or not and, if so, how can teh author's political viewpoint be
discerned and described. My pick of the most representative exchange
is here:

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0309&msg=85983&sort=date

To me, what shocked at the time was not the substance of these
exchanges, it was the smug, supercilious tone being employed. Perhaps
the most frustrating element was the habit certain people had of
modulating between arguing that 'left wing' was too broad a term to be
useful, and loftily declaiming that no such 'left wing' sentiment is
discernible in Pynchon's work.

Pynchon has described himself as a 'historical novelist'. From the
amount of material he has devoted to the Sixties (however you define
that period and concept), we can be sure it's a time which holds some
interest for him. From his writing, omni-faceted, subtle, and brimming
with dualities though it may be, we can get a feel for what he thinks
about these matters. His opinion of Bush (Senior) and Reagan, for
instance, is unambiguously negative.

I wouldn't want to go back and read my every post from 2003 (and
neither would anyone else). But I still pretty much 100% believe in
what I was trying to say back then: that Vineland is underrated, that
Vineland is a political novel, and that the author's political views
can be described as broadly left-leaning. I also cleave to my
suspicion that some reviewers of Vineland slated it because they
didn't like the way Pynchon's politics were on such overt display in
the book. It's certainly clear that some people on this list don't
like Vineland for that very reason. It's significant that I have never
heard the view of Vineland that these people espouse expressed
anywhere else but on this list.

That Pynchon spends a lot of time criticising 'the Left', exploring
what weaknesses and, yes, inherent vices, may have led to teh defeat
of teh various Sixties movements, gives right-wing readers an excuse
to ignore the fact that Pynchon's criticism of the Left comes from a
Leftist perspective. He is not asking, what happened to those ditzy
drug-addled hippies? He's asking, what happened to us?

The forces of Conservatism, particularly in the US, have long sought
to pin the blame for all modern society's ills on 'the permissive
Sixties'.  In a sense, Pynchon is doing the opposite, asking how could
it come to this? Because it was the failure of the well-intentioned
Sixties revolutions that led us to where we are today, via where we
were back when Pynchon was writing Vineland. There can be little doubt
that Pynchon preferred the Sixties, flaws and all, to the Eighties,
which were basically all flaw.

Pynchon's heart was with the hippies, not the forces of Conservatism.
There are many reasons to love Pynchon's writing, but the left-leaning
political and social sensibility on display throughout his work is
definitely one of them.

Cheers
J