Zoyd

[Rob Jackson]

Tore:

> Absolutely. Van Meter is a snitch, and Zoyd is indeed in some sense
> a hypocrite for keeping up the friendship. But he's also very human,
> isn't he? As Michael Bailey says, Zoyd chooses friendship over  
> abstract
> principle. We may certainly blame him for this, but I would also say
> that we can understand him. We can easily agree on a lot of Zoyd's
> flaws and inherent vices. Whether we choose to consider Zoyd  
> sympathetic
> or unsympathetic is more a matter of individual sentiment that any
> absolutes in the text, however.
>
>> > VL is Pynchon's diagnosis of the failure of the 60s revolution.  
>> [...]
>> > 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.
>
> [...] outside forces
> - the Nixon Repression - also had something to do with it. The  
> revolution
> was doomed from the beginning for those reasons you outline above, but
> National Guardsmen gunning down students are also to blame for the  
> failure
> of the revolution. VL shows us both sides of the coin.

Sure. I'm inclined to the opinion, though, that part of Pynchon's  
purpose or message, insofar as VL is a "political novel", is to show  
that it's the weaknesses and complicity of the Zoyds and Frenesis of  
the world (i.e., all of us) that allow the "forces of Control" to  
prevail. That "daisy chain ... " And it's in this respect that the  
characters serve as "ciphers", or types.

Having said that, both Zoyd's and Frenesi's mistakes and foibles as  
disclosed in the novel make them more human, more "real". As John  
Bailey pointed out not so long back: how many of us, how many of the  
people we meet, how many of those we share our lives with, are "fully- 
rounded and complete ... ? They're [we're ...] all Becomings". Sho'  
nuff.

Pynchon's focus in VL is not on Kent State or National Guardsmen,  
valid though your point is, it's on Rex Snuvvle's fetish for his  
Porsche ("Bruno"), Elliot X and BAAD, those ditzy Pisks et al.  
slumming it for the summer with 24fps, PR3 imploding on itself and the  
eventual assassination of Weed Atman.

It's never white hats and black hats in Pynchon's work, though there's  
often a wistful longing for that sort of clearly-defined blame game,  
the way that the various pulp genre fictions he pastiches tally up  
their moral balance sheets neatly at story's end. In all of the novels  
it's always shades of grey ... and greyer.

cheers