Good Wills Hunting for Everyday People

[Robin Landseadel]

Just remember that the author is a joke machine who puts puns and  
really awful groaners in all of his books—especially Gravity's  
Rainbow. Sometimes he's doing it because he thinks it's funny. Funny  
is kinda funny, particularly when you get intensely political. You can  
turn a lot of people  off that way.  On a certain level he's the bad  
taste king—just ask Brigadier Pudding—on another he's knows he a  
schlub, just like anybody else, on another he's a scientist, on  
another he's a conspiracy theorist. Look at where Pynchon is pointing  
in Vineland, there's a critique of Government Propaganda being  
developed in TV Cop Shows and the development of an un-win-able war on  
drugs. That's implied in GR, it's the foreground in Vineland.. Lotsa  
different angles to look at this one.

On Jul 29, 2009, at 8:03 AM, Campbel Morgan wrote:

> John wrote,
> This is why pop culture occupies such a place in Vineland (and... the
> new one). It's part of the fabric of daily experience. It's our
> reality.
>
> Yes, but it's a target of harsh satire in VL. Is P a hypocrite or wha?
> The high culture equals low culture critical response to P's work was
> destroyed by this novel.
> Americans, the satire claimed, are watching too much TV and not paying
> attention to robber barrons and crooked cops.
> Or is Pynchon's narrator some sort of cocky ass Southey lad, Good Will
> Hunting, telling college professors that they are wasting their time
> and money reading all the wrong books?
> That's the critique; the Robin Williams shrink, smart and tough, also
> a wise-ass Southey, doesn't need to read Howard Zinn or Noam Chomskey,
> he is American People.
>
> Don't know about people in the future reading P and watching 50s
> movies to twease out the allusions to esoteric feminsit theory, but I
> hope they listen to SLy and the Family Stone's Everyday People.