Liss/stepvr but also Molly Hite

[Mark Kohut]

I agree with Thomas and Salman. We need to understand it better, which
means more deeply in Pynchon's case.

Look. it is 1984 in this novel, a 'political' novel-to-the max" we know
stands out as mind-coating for Pynchon. A novel when I first read it,
was all about THEN, some historic past I had to learn about but which was
now way over. I was high school age.

How wrong, right? There is good circumstantial evidence that this novel
came to Pynchon as he was writing some others. His lifetime writing plan
in his letter to Cork Smith alludes to M & D and a novel not unlike what*
Against the Day* became but makes no reference to a novel like* Vineland*.
I suggest, his mind deeply coated with knowledge of authoritarianism,
fascism,--there is again solid evidence he read Erich Fromm's *Escape From
Freedom*
and Hannah Arendt before or during GR, and more, including Orwell--he
watched American society 'unfold itself' since he started GR and wrote
this, his first
full novel of contemporary social observation and conceit-finding and deep
metaphor-making.

That novel, 1984, begins with the clocks striking thirteen, which is "later
than usual". The time Zoyd was finally up.

A creeping fig, supposedly an invasive plant---anyone, anyone?---invades
his window space and Jays, aggressive birds, as one gone Plister educated
me,
stomp on the roof. What other writer has ever had birds (of any kind)
stomping? Hitchcock adapting that Du Maurier story? Whiff of the gothic in
that stomping.
The atmosphere of the times.

As was also observed, P's novels start against the sky somehow, and this
one with domestic invaders mistaken in his dream for carrier pigeons
from "someplace far across the ocean"---like England?, the England of 1984
and GR?

And carrier pigeons bring messages, these with 'light pulsing in their
wings"--another hidden possible revelation which, like Oedipa in her
opening scene,
is never quite heard. This one secular and domestic.

On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 3:52 AM Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
wrote:

> Am 19.04.2020 um 06:22 schrieb peterthooper at juno.com:
>
> > It’s a well-written good story with, yes, some background
> political/social elements, but there’s always some of that sh*t about,
> bound to appear in any perceptive author’s story.
>
> You couldn't be more wrong. As Salman Rushdie says, VL is a major
> political novel.
>
>
> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-vineland.html
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>