IVIV parody?

[alice wellintown]

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any
lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the
Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to
melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that
flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the
new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for
Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest
of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have
held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an
aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to
face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his
capacity for wonder.

Vineland The Good is Lost.

Doc is no Adam. Not even Milton could make Adam human. Satan is far
more human than either Adam of Even in Paradise. And, while Milton
tries, he fails to convince us that Adam and Eve are truly happy in
Paradise. It's all about their Work, really. Tending gardens with
advanced tools delivered by angels from Heaven and Virgin Sex and
sweet dreams ...but Milton does convince us, as he intends to, that
Adam and Eve are better off Fallen. For how else could they be our
Grand Parents? I agree with David Morris; IV needs a Satan, but all we
get is this sinking and rotting dying generation and their songs.



On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> Remember—this is a noir.
>
> Part of the rules of the game in Noir is that most of the participants are
> "shaded"—rendered sinister by the nature of the form. In these sorts of
> tales everyone is touched by corruption. Very applicable to the L.A. basin.
> The out of control property development/car culture leads naturally to
> dystopian visions of future climate change. Hardly matters if you're
> attempting to do the right thing or not—the inherent vices of simply living
> in L.A. at that time leads to a net loss. The final scenes of the novel, the
> Lakers losing the playoffs, the enveloping fog attest to these losses.
>
> On Oct 24, 2009, at 1:19 PM, Mark Woollams wrote:
>
>> Isn't part of the inherent vice the melting of these social roles? Doc
>> plays both "good guy" and "bad guy" because he's a human being. I think part
>> of IV is Pynchon's toying with our perspectives. We no longer know who is
>> good or bad, the world isn't black and white. Instead everything has blended
>> together and we're left in a stoner state of confusion. Are we high? No,
>> we're just over-stimulated.
>
>
>