Prising some Character and Emotion out of Pynchon's Books

[Michael Bailey]

Emotions and Characters in Pynchon's Novels
a personal rumination

>4) Vineland
>a) Zoyd
>b) the people that aren't in it
>c) emotions: they're all over the place

If in V. we learned by empathy with Benny to be cool but care,
and arrived at that lesson before he did, but were given to understand - by
our rapport with him - that he would eventually "get it"...that his
lostness and wandering were the result of his leaving the embrace of
the military, and that he and the civilian world were getting to know
one another...

...if in Gravity's Rainbow we see the author - in light of the
escalation in Vietnam
and the increased proportion of his audience who'd be aware of the
way it was bringing more and more young men back into the military's
Pig-Bodine-like bear hug - building our identification with Slothrop, a jaunty
lad who seeks and finds his lost blues harp, and along the way learns
to bend a note...
but, ahmm, never really makes it back: is Slothrop the Unknown Soldier?

...then in Vineland we see, and feel for, Zoyd.  This is my favorite
Pynchon novel,
but even if it weren't I think I would still like Zoyd.  If I were
more industrious,
I'd make my case for Frenesi.  I'm not sure I don't like her better
than Zoyd, and
it would be good sometime to work that out and also to make clear why she
is not just likeable, but loveable...

But one likes Zoyd. One ought to anyway.  Again, not much proof.
I just think you should.

Next up: What did I mean, the people that aren't in it?  I think I
meant Zoyd's parents.
What did I want to say about them?  Can't remember.  They raised a good kid,
although if they're still alive during the book's action he ought to
have called them
at least once.  Although not to borrow money.  (he wouldn't anyway)

Emotions are all over the place in _Vineland_.
I can do this in one paragraph.  I mean real good honest personal emotions
as well as the political or zany ones: for every railing against the
garrison state,
there's a Zoyd singing to Prairie; for every fake windowpane blithely
jumped thru,
there's the shiver of (rectal) fear when the jumper finally understands how much
he was risking all those years of leaping thru real ones.  To stand
for all of them,
I want to cite Zoyd's schoolmarm feeling at his wedding.  I can feel this, I can
see faces of friends in love - one in particular, even - and that
emotion, like one
might in Pynchon suspect, ramifies out and somehow does become thoughts
about relationships, politics, etc.  But, darn it, it does start out
as pure emotion.
It may not stop there, but it's clear that the thoughts proceed from feelings.


-- 
"My God, I am fully in favor of a little leeway or the damnable jig is
up! " - Hapworth Glass