gaaah...kreplach! -- two openings

[John Bailey]

How old is Zoyd in 1984? Is that ever specified? I always imagine him
around late 40s or 50. Which would make him late teens, early 20s in
1955. Old enough to be in the Navy.

Maybe that's something. Zoyd served in WWII and the complete omission
of that from the novel is significant. He's the product of GR who has
entirely suppressed his conditioning. P knows it will take an
ultra-keen-eyed reader of his earlier work to spot it.

This is a ridiculously unlikely scenario, of course.

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>  jochen stremmel wrote:
>> A-a-and remember re: the window jump in Vineland the opening scene of
>> V where there is "one potential berserk studying the best technique
>> for jumping through a plate glass window"
>>
>
> so to add another unit, making it a 3-body problem...
>
> in the opening of V., unlike GR's, which contains quite the sausage
> fest in pirate's living quarters, afaik no ladies present among the
> snoozers and breakfasters...V's different tableau includes a mingling
> of the sexes based on a humbling-themselves of the sailors, returning
> to the suckling stage
>
> - my thesis on V. is that its somewhat more optimistic date of
> publication prior to the assassinations of the 60s meant that the
> author could reasonably believe that sailors on leave, and by
> extension any demobilized military, and by even further extension, any
> and all members of a militant-male-chauvinist society, might be
> willing to humble themselves before the females whom they so sorely
> neglected in their pursuit of hostilities and study of war...to submit
> to 'regrooving' and revert to infancy to allow themselves to at least
> attempt to mature into a civilian lifestyle
>
> -- the nameless defenestrator in V. bringing into play in the
> narrative the invocation of Geronimo...thus making the tail of the
> kite longer - this militant society has been warping its members via
> conflicts with the native Americans even before the numbered wars of
> the 20th century...
>
> - also, he's only a potential berserker; like Ploy, the relationship
> of his war-warped psyche to the civilian world of the Street, its
> shops and windows, is tenuous but there is still a chance of
> reconciliation -- like Ploy being teased out of suicide with the
> coke-sacker, cork-soaker, sock-tucker wordplay, the 'potential
> berserker' staves off mayhem by actual thinking
>
> -- a-and in V., there is a belief in the rather steadfast civilizing
> impulses of the ladies, Beatrice, Rachel, et al and of course Paola
> with her miraculous medal -- (while in GR, pirate's boys' club life
> has him taking up a love affair with someone unattainable - the
> Mossmoon lady, right? and she isn't trying to civilize him at all, but
> rather to enjoy his ruffianly charms before cutting him loose to
> subdue the natives some more
>
>  - a-and Roger's doomed pursuit of jessica indicates that he rather
> than she is making the attempts to cultivate peaceful civilian life,
> while she is in fact more powerfully drawn to the status quo in the
> pursuit of the (at least commissioned, and perhaps titled as well?)
> Beaver, which means class distinctions, which means the acceptance of
> feminine coveting of the perks belonging to a class of people who
> relish and benefit from war -
>
>  now in Vineland, the question of war has moved to the background, and
> it is the existence of a permanent class of people who utilize force
> to concretize class distinctions which is mulled over...hector the
> comic and vond the tragic mask of these functionaries...and how both
> of them have power over Zoyd, yes, but also overwhelming,
> overshadowing, overweening (i must look that word up sometime...)
> power over the civilizing, kindly, open and honest, socially aware
> feminine impulses of Frenesi...and a new entity - the asskicking
> feminine of DL - arises to counter this machismo-ridden imbalance in
> the Force!