AtD/VL: The Traverse Clan

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

"'Political family,' Zoyd remarked, 'for sure.'" (Vineland, p. 372)

The Traverse Clan bridges more than a century and connects Against the 
Day with
Vineland. On the social micro-level it's the largest figuration in 
Pynchon's whole universe.

The main characteristics are:

--- Anarcho-syndicalism: from Webb's "'Here. The most precious thing I 
own.' He took his
union card from his wallet and showed them, one by one" (AtD, p. 93) to 
the folks "arguing
the perennial question of whether the United States still lingered in a 
prefascist twilight, or
whether that darkness had fallen long ago, and the light they thought 
they saw was coming
only from millions of Tubes all showing the same bright-colored 
shadows"  (VL, p. 371). This
suggests a high continuity, although the family's actual political 
achievements remain limited.

--- Disloyal women: from Lake's sleeping and living with the murderer of 
her father to Frenesi's
cooperating with the enemy plus leaving her child. And perhaps Prairie 
will carry on the curse.

Why is that? The artistic function of the disloyal-women-motif (besides 
illustrating everybody's
inherent vice bzw. the fall of man) is to articulate and mediate the 
tension between - to use the
terms of N. Katherine Hayles - the "kinship system" and the "snitch 
system". In the case of
Vineland this makes plot and action work. In Against the Day it's at 
least a necessary requisite.

Thoughts, anyone?

Kai

"Resistance in Vineland is less dramatic [than in GR] but more 
sustainable --- and also more
successful." [?] (N. Katherine Hayles: 'Who was saved?': Families, 
Snitches, and Recuperation
in Pynchon's Vineland, pp. 14-30, here 29, in: G. Green et al. (ed.): 
The Vineland Papers)