GUARDIAN PIECE ON 'VINELAND'

[Mark Kohut]

I have an inordinate fondness for 'reevaluations'.  I just LOVE when time shows 
up
the trendy, shallower first readers.....

Around the time I first read V., a long time ago,  I read a book called The 
Failure of Criticism....showing
how often, with wonderful specific examples, many of the current best & 
brightest readers
of their time ...missed it............start with Melville, a classic 
example..........but so many missed so
many....

I think Robin's right on here and I will add: they probably published it cause 
he is a columnist
and wrote it...

And, his 'political' beat and, as R. sez, his personal experience a bit later of 
the people and
place, gave him his revised perspective...............



----- Original Message ----
From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Sun, August 1, 2010 11:30:20 AM
Subject: Re: GUARDIAN PIECE ON 'VINELAND'

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:04 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> Why would Guardian print this?

They Liked it?

> If it were a first reading of VL back
> when the book was issued it would still not merit a few lines in
> Guardian. What is the point of this?

    "Zoyd is a typically cartoonish Pynchon character, equal parts
    Homer Simpson and the Dude in The Big Lebowski, but unlike
    previous Pynchon protagonists, there's a depth and a sadness
    to him."

I think that's one of the points being made. Starting with Vineland, there's 
more recognizable human behavior in TRP's novels.
    
> . . . this reviewer can not even name the
> protagonist (Prairie not Zoyd)

That is a matter of opinion. Of course, the fact that sometimes there really 
aren't any protagonists in Pynchon's novels is very much the point.

> and seems determined to save a great
> ignored and mis-read cult classic from the fate of the  Dude, the
> dusty bottom Blockbuster shelves, by dismissing half of the book.

He's just saying that the book gets better on re-reading, which is most 
certainly true.

And this:

    His earlier novels, V, The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's
    Rainbow, were packed with clever facts and
    speculations about secret power networks and
    European colonialism and the American military-
    industrial complex. Vineland marked a maturing. Instead
    of a precocious cynicism about politics, Pynchon, now
    53, expressed anguish about America's trajectory from
    Nixon to Reagan: "the Repression went on, growing
    wider, deeper, and less visible, regardless of the names
    in power."

> Like, 9-11 was like a while ago and you should read Conrad's The
> secret Agent cause it's like a Hitchcock and stuff. Man, I mean, I'm
> the Dude, man, and like I finally finished re-reading VL and like,
> Guardian must be smokin the same shit as me cause like they are gonna
> print my shit, Man.

Conversely, by virtue of living in and around places described in the novel 
"Vineland", the author of this little essay tunes us onto low-level information 
casually tossed about TRP's novels, affording a deeper reading of an apparently 
shallow text.

> On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 6:43 AM, Roy Cross <roycross at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/thomas-pynchon-vineland-rereading