Zoyd

[alice wellintown]

John Carvill<johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:

> One of the main reasons is that he is portrayed sympathetically, and
> likeably. A simple statement, I know, but sometimes you don't need a
> theory to explain something.


He is not portrayed sympathetically. Just for a moment, allow that my
theory, "VL is about work," is a working theory and apply it to Zoyd.

What does Zoyd do? He is a gypsy-roofer and ex-musician. He picks up
odd jobs. Not bad. He has a kid to support. He's not a responsible
daddy much of the time, but he's better than nothing. Although he's a
pothead and he likes jail-bait and he's not the daddy any kid with a
good daddy would want, he's not a bad man. Dumb and stuck in the past,
but not evil.


 But he also works for the big bad government. What does he do for
them? He rats people out and he jumps through a window each year to
collect a check. Well, he got set up and beat up and he needs to
protect his child and . . .yes he is Reagan's Hippie---an actor like
Reagan only Zoyd plays a hippie, not a president, on TV.

And, he's so screwed up by the Tube, he actually thinks he has a real
acting job. He gets upset when he discovers the glass is made of
sugar. Why should he care? Why does he care what he looks like on the
Tube? Why does he go home to watch himself on the Tube? Why does he
want to be a celeb? Why are his relationships, including his
relationship with his daughter, TV sitcom relationships? He wants to
be young forever. He wants to be a TV-Zoyd. And so he is. Why should
we have sympathy for him? Because his real life is tough? Because he
has to live with the choices he's made and even deal with the big bad
government knocking him around? Well, America is a tough place. The
big bad government knocks and sock and rocks people out of their shoes
everyday. He knows how hard it has been on the Traverse and many more
like them. He is spineless. He makes it easier for the government to
re-write history and undermine the only thing that has a proven track
record of tempering the excesses of late-capitalism's bloody machine.
 If he were simply a rodeo clown, we could forgive him and laugh it
off. But Zoyd has taken that step to the other side. He knows it.
That's why Pynchon marries him to Zoyd. And DOC, is a Zoyd-Hector in
IV. Again, not a sympathetic figure at all.