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[Joseph Tracy]

On Feb 18, 2009, at 12:22 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:


> I just had a thought that seems worth sounding out.  Perhaps  
> Vineland's unique place in TRP's body of work  has to do with his  
> closeness to it. Some define the novel as fiction of its own time;   
> Buddhists define the navel similarly, but by that definition( which  
> I 1st heard in some Am. lit class) VL and CoL49 are his only  
> novels. Is it possible that P is handling something he is close to  
> with extra tenderness and hope. By setting the story in 1984 he is  
> asking us where America is going and his closeness to the subject  
> causes him to handle it with more restraint and focus, perhaps less  
> literary playfulness. If so it may speak in a special way about his  
> hopes for his own country.

Ugh. I wish I could strike that last sentence.

  I disagree with the idea that the focus on TV or use of TV styles  
diminishes the seriousness of the work. Mcluhan said the medium is  
the message and There is something dishonest about the way TV  
disappears from most American fiction. I think TRP is going for the  
American jugular and that jugular is the Tube.

Part of my sense of the place of this novel has to do with Zoyd's  
arrival in Humboldt County. In 80 a for a brief time and again in 86   
extending to many years  I had a similar arrival and made a home  
there. The feeling Pynchon evokes is very similar to my own.