Vineland and the Death of the 60s

[Monte Davis]

I read Col49 and V. in 1967 between inhalations and demonstrations, and GR
in 1973 while building a geodesic dome in the woods. When Vineland came out
my career was just finding a groove, with children on the way. So
I'mdemographically primed for "Sixties and aftermath" readings of Pynchon
-- but at the same time, wary of them.

Not that that isn't in the books, but that even in the early stories and in
V. -- written well before the "Sixties" themes had crystallized -- he was
casting a much wider net. He's been working throughout his career with what
you aptly call "Paradise Lost" themes at multiple, nested levels:

The paradise lost of infancy and earliest childhood, before individuation
from parents and the world...

The paradise lost of every culture's Eden/ Golden Age/ original sin
mythologies, before mortality and separation from nature...

The specifically Christian paradise lost -- and redemptions -- linked to
Henry Adams' Virgin, William Pynchon, Cyprian, et al...

The US historical paradise lost: fresh starts and liberty, all yeoman
farmers and no Philadelphia lawyers, all men created equal (if they aren't
slaves or savages or women, of course)...

The Romantic paradise lost, before Dickensian cities and dark satanic
mills...

The autobiographical Young Tom Pynchon paradise lost of 1945: an
eight-year-old in Oyster Bay, Long Island, soaking up pulp magazines and
comix and movies about Nazis, caped superheros, detectives, cowboy
shootouts and spies and rocket ships, never doubting that America the
Exceptional had conquered evil for good. And then growing up...

And yes, the Sixties paradise lost: a few years when it seemed --
especially in California, especially with the right drugs and music and
politics -- that everything in culture and consciousness could, would,
*must* change for the better right now. It was swell -- and we awoke and
found us here, on the cold hill’s side.

Again, I would never deny that that last narrative has been very
influential for Pynchon, most obviously in Vineland and IV. But it's his
fugue-like interweaving of *many* kinds of "fall from grace" that will keep
people reading him when "the Sixties" is no longer a thing.
.



On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 7:49 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I believe Pynchon married Ma. Jackson the year VINELAND was published.
>
> I think Pynchon's vision of the kind of film that is in VINELAND shapes
> the meaning. among other things.
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Jul 3, 2015, at 12:15 AM, gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I've sort of been stuck on what has been so called Pynchon's California
> novels... in particular I've been re-reading Vineland... the whole Frenesi,
> 24fps, Brock Vond, death of Weed Atman, and the collapse of PR3... Pynchon
> is writing about a sort of failed revolution or maybe not even revolution,
> and it is interesting that he is using the medium of film to document it
> all, to be followed circa 1984 with the ubiquitous Tube... I didn't really
> give the death of Weed Atman much thought in my first reading of the novel,
> but it is really pretty strong writing, after reading Bleeding Edge and
> Inherent Vice... Gravity's Rainbow, even though it is set in WWII, still
> reads like someone coming to grips with the fallout of what was going on
> during the 1960s, the is a sense of Paradise Lost about the whole book...
> Vineland is written by someone who never really forgot the promise that was
> floated so liberally, someone who had come out of hiding, to tell us where
> we've been and why, even though I think Pynchon was more or less
> acclimating himself, married and child, settled down for all practical
> purposes, but I still plugged into that moment, maybe a little more
> cynical, older, wiser, etc. This is just my interpretation... Gravity's
> Rainbow is a big novel, and there are many threads of meaning... but
> somehow in my mind, Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland have some sort of
> strange link, not necessarily in content or publication chronology, but
> maybe one is an Inferno of sorts and the other is a sort of Paradise, where
> in Vineland one gets a sense that the demons that plagued Pynchon earlier
> in his career, had somehow been exorcised and reconciled with, during a 17
> year silence...
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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