Zoyd

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Rob Jackson:
 
> "Zoyd, to be sure, made a point of never pocketing any of Hector's PI
> money personally, though he was content to go on eating the groceries,
> burning the gas, and smoking the pot others obtained with it." (VL 24)
>
> Zoyd is characterised here as both a hypocrite and a knowing
> accomplice in the snitch racket. The negative tone adopted in the
> narrative towards Zoyd in this instance is quite plain, and it's
> precisely what the "technically" hedge in the earlier scene is
> referring to.

Zoyd may certainly be a hypocrite, as who isn't in the presence of money.
This is a point already made by Pynchon in GR, where he says of the
Counterforce:
 
"They are as schizoid, as double-minded in the massive presence of money,
as any of the rest of us, and that's the hard fact. [...] We do know what's
going on, and we let it go on." (GR, 712-13)
 
Note how Pynchon includes "the rest of us" in this passage and modulates
into "we." If this is harsh satire, it is not only directed at the deluded 
dreamers of the Counterforce, or the Zoyds of this world, but also at 
Pynchon himself, and at me and you (yes, also you, hiding over there in the 
corner! Come out! We can see you!). I guess that makes us all hypocrites,
all the objects of Pynchon's scorn.... 
 
But hypocrites or not, alice is still wrong: Zoyd does emphatically NOT 
"rat people out for the government." There's a huge difference between
active snitching and Zoyd's passivity. Zoyd may be guilty of Sloth as most
of the rest of us (see Pynchon's essay on Sloth and the sins of ommission), 
but he's not a snitch. Calling him so is a plain misreading, and not just a 
matter of whether we choose to regard Zoyd in a forgiving or a harshly 
satirical light.
 
Tore
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