VL-IV (14): Round vs. Flat

[Ian Livingston]

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.


Do you really think that is all Pynchon has in mind, Robin?  I think
it is one of the many strands woven into this wonderful novel as it is
in OBA's other works.  But I get the impression, both from the quote
below out of the Slow Learner intro, and from the many threads y'all
have explored here and elsewhere, that Pynchon thinks marijuana laws,
among others, are dead wrong and I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly
even though it has been many years since I last took a toke.  Pynchon
is truly a genius.  He works at depths of meaning that leave me gaping
in awe now as begin to plumb some of them.  Pot's just a tool, not the
objective, I think.

No question of Zoyd's good guy status, non-union worker and all (I've
worked both sides of that issue and it ain't about collective
bargaining power anymore, wasn't in the '70s, and it ain't now -- it's
another  big business with hands down the workers' pants.)   This
actually sounds pretty personal as regards the parenting problem.  P
is likely a househusband most of the time, assuming he's a married
man, being a pop and all.  Probably changed a fair share of diapers in
that role.  Probably felt some of the despair of helplessness in the
early days of it.  The pot thing seems to me like a specter in the
magic show, rather than the point of the scene.

It is that continuing in the face of despair that resonates for me in
this scene.  What do you do when everything goes wrong?  As the
Zennies say, 'Chop sood carry water.'   Or, 'Change the diapers,
Zoyd."

-i

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>                                . . . . 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."
>