Vond

[Mark Kohut]

I suggest that it is his 'depth psycholgy' study...starting with Freud. Fathers vs. sons plays a major part in GR, as we remember, and was a major theme of the sixties, as we know....

I won't touch the Speilberg reference.





This seems to me to be a powerful and essentially accurate analysis of Vond's character: i.e., the quintessential authoritarian male.  An intriguing follow-up - why are Pynchon's "alternative" characters so pre-possessed by these patriarchal figures?  Does Pynchon have a "family resemblance" to (dare I say it???) Steven Spielberg.  Is every character looking for a family and a father?

And what, indeed, does Vond want from the ghost of Weed?  What do living want from the Thanatoids?

--- On Sun, 3/15/09, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> Subject: Vond
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Sunday, March 15, 2009, 8:31 PM
> Have not read through Frenesi posts
> yet but wanted to post this first.
> 
> What is being repressed in Vond that translates into 
> a life of psycho-sexual obsession? What is the role of the
> feminine in the psychic architecture of a serious fascist?
> Does TP’s portrait of Vond hold up to scrutiny?  I
> have to say I think it does, but that power freaks seem to
> divide between the ones with obvious obsessions with young
> women/men/ subordinate sex objects like Limbaugh, McCain,
> Clinton, Strom Thurmond, Gingrich, and those whose real
> obsession is  an all consuming  need to possess
> and use others. To be loved while they take all that others
> have and love, to order the universe aright with the strong
> on top and the weak beneath. Frenesi is the wild thing he
> can’t control, Prairie the future he has not formed,
> bullied or named.
> 
> 
> 
> Why does Vond want Weed Atman’s spirit ?
> 
> 
> 
> 
>