VL-IV (14): Round vs. Flat

[Robin Landseadel]

	 			. . . . Somewhere I had come up with the notion
	that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction, when the
	truth, as everyone knows, is nearly the direct opposite.
	Moreover, contrary evidence was all around me, though I chose
	to ignore it, for in fact the fiction both published and
	unpublished that moved and pleased me then as now was
	precisely that which had been made luminous, undeniably
	authentic by having been found and taken up, always at a cost,
	from deeper, more shared levels of the life we all really live. I
	hate to think that I didn't, however defectively, understand this.
	Maybe the rent was just too high. In any case, stupid kid, I
	preferred fancy footwork instead.
	Slow Learner, page 21

Chapter 14 starts with Zody's big bust, with a Kubrickian monolith of  
weed [doubtless crafted in the backlots of Shepperton Studios] planted  
by "them" (in this case, Brock) in his living room. Grandma Sasha  
rushes in just as the bust is underway and the scene continues in  
Pynchon's usual comediparanoiac mode when suddenly:

	On cue, Prairie woke up into all the commotion and started to
	yell, more out of inquiry than distress, and Zoyd and Sasha,
	both heading for the door at the same time, collided classically
	and staggered back screaming, "Stupid pothead," and
	"Meddling bitch," respectively. They then glared at each other
	till Zoyd finally offered, "Look — you're a old Hollywood babe,
	been up and down the boulevard a couple times," reaching a
	cloth diaper out of a cupboard in the bathroom, which by now
	they'd been jammed together into closer than either would have
	liked by the increasingly mysterious activities necessary to get
	Hector's colossal dopechunk out of the house again, "can't you
	even see this is a setup?" proceeding to the bedroom, followed
	attentively by Sasha. "They're tryin' to get her away from me. Hi
	there, Slick, 'member your grandma?" While Sasha talked and
	played, Zoyd took off Prairie's diaper, got rid of the shit and
	rinsed off the diaper in the toilet, threw it in with the others along
	with some Borax in a plastic garbage can that was just about
	heavy enough to pack up the hill to the laundromat, came back
	in with a warm cloth and a tube of Desitin, made sure his ex-
	mother-in-law noticed he was wiping in the right direction, and
	only about the time he was pinning the new diaper on
	remembering that he should have paid more attention, cared
	more for these small and at times even devotional routines he'd
	been taking for granted, now, with the posse in the parlor, too
	late, grown so suddenly precious. . . .

How this scene would somehow be autobiographical, I really don't know  
but you know it comes from "from deeper, more shared levels of the  
life we all really live." You can practically smell this scene, and  
it's not just babyshit either. Judging from the author's comments in  
"Slow Learner," getting more "personal", making the characters more  
"real"—"rounder"—was on OBA's mind around the time of "Vineland." That  
certainly carries over to Mason & Dixon." Though characters in  
Vineland shift in their modes of presentation, their degrees of  
reality pushed at times all the way out to animated cartoon & Cheeh &  
Chong territory, this scene renders Prairie's Dad as one of Pynchon's  
"Good Guys," not simply by virtue of being on the right side of a  
series of complex ideologies [not always anyway—he's a scab laborer]  
but by having a soul, by paying attention to "these small and at times  
even devotional routines he'd been taking for granted," by being far  
more complex and interesting than your run-of-the-mill mindless stoner— 
currently, thanks to Seth Rogan*, a staple of the Cinema. [Though of  
course, Seth Rogan's everyman qualities—his innate "roundness"—is his  
big selling point.]

Considering this period of time when we are reading chapter 14 of  
Vineland, I find the simultaneous talk on Capitol Hill as regards  
decriminalization/legalization of marijuana an interesting little  
synchronicity.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/26/holder-vows-to-end-raids_n_170119.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26rockefeller.html?_r=2&th&emc=th
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-sweeney/taking-the-pro-pot-positi_b_179653.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/26/obama-takes-pot-legalizat_n_179563.html


Though Obama laughed off legalization/taxation yesterday, Eric  
Holder's previous announcement of the halting of DEA drug raids on  
compassionate cannabis dispensaries rings much like Brock Vond's  
helicopter tether being yanked by economic forces controlled by forces  
high above him.

Beyond anybody's complex analysis of postmodern tropes and other  
highbrow concepts too highflautin' to be even decipherable, Vineland  
is about Thomas Pynchon's passionate distaste for our nation's drug  
laws. Col. Washington's and Gershom's scene in Mason & Dixon also  
comes to mind—our founding Father smoked weed! Now get over it!—But  
more to the point, our drug laws are designed to create and maintain  
outsiders. Busting folks that tend to dissent in this fashion has  
become a pro-forma process, creating a semi-permanant Underground. It  
is an inherent vice of law enforcement.

*Current photo of Seth Rogan: http://www.games2c.com/images/game/gid2168/images/screenshots/sid3086/monsters_vs_aliens__x360__-__bob.jpg

================================================

Mr. Nada sez: "Always use plain text."