Pynchon's back catalogue

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 27, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Robert Mahnke wrote:

> I take Vineland as being much more about what America's children did
> to themselves in the 60's, 70's and 80's, than about what was done to
> them by forces of opression.  The reader buys into the idealization of
> Frenesi, and then sees what Frenesi did.  It's much easier to say that
> it was Them, not us, but isn't that the point?

That's one of the points, but not the only point. On a certain level  
Frenesi's function in the story is much like femme fatale Kathie  
Moffat in Jacques Tourneur's "Out of the Past", playing an opportunist  
willing to play both sides to serve her own interests. And Against the  
Day points just as much as Vineland to the fascist within.

But Vineland's loose clan of activists and misfits were no match for  
the fascists without and many of them—Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush,  
G. Gordon Liddy—are called out by their names. C.A.M.P. is not  
portrayed as some useful mode of maintaining social order either, for  
that matter.

In any case, I think Salman Rushdie was on to something . . .

>> http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-vineland.html