Zoyd

[Rob Jackson]

Me

>> > "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.

Tore

> 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.


I agree with you. However, Van Meter most definitely is a snitch,  
through and through, then as now, and Zoyd knows it and knew it and  
even so has kept up that "best mate" relationship with him since the  
60s.

Sex is another of the things that, according to Pynchon, "we" are  
predisposed (genetically so, it seems) to be "double-minded" about.  
Frenesi has never once crossed a picket line in her life, the  
narrative in VL is at pains to remind us late in the novel, but yet  
she sleeps with the enemy, and betrays her cause in the most dire way  
for that itch in her pussy.

VL is Pynchon's diagnosis of the failure of the 60s revolution.  
Neither the Timothy Learyesque dropouts like Zoyd nor the Gloria  
Steinemesque radicals like Frenesi could resist the temptations of, on  
the one hand, money, and on the other, sex (and the Tube had a large  
part to play as well ... ). No matter how sympathetic we find either  
parent of the novel's true protagonist (Prairie) - and both of them  
have redeeming human characteristics and are immensely "likeable" -  
ultimately neither had what it takes, the "courage of their  
convictions", and *that's* why the 60s revolution failed, so Pynchon's  
parable tells us.

all best