LISS/STEPVR (27,21) April 20 7th roundup

[Michael Bailey]

Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 04:22:16 GMT
From: "peterthooper at juno.com" <peterthooper at juno.com>

 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.

To say _Vineland_ is mainly about that is like saying _Wait for Marcy_ by
Rosamond du Jardin is about drunk driving because there?s an incident of it
at Marcy?s prom.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/747657.Rosamond_du_Jardin

------- tl/dr. That Rosamond du Jardin was pretty cool, though.




Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 05:38:38 GMT
From: "peterthooper at juno.com"

... Shulamith Firestone, ....

Take Me Anyplace You Want": Pynchon's Literary Career as a Maternal
Construct in _Vineland_'
by Terry Caesar, _Novel: A Forum on Fiction_ 25.2, 1992, pp. 181-199.

------- I'm your vehicle, baby. I love Shulamith Firestone, although
Frenesi ain't exactly her but gets a smackdown within Kevin-Bacon distance
of hers.







Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 07:17:26 GMT
From: "peterthooper at juno.com

Hetero- dyads (no, spellcheck, not Herero dryads) are a strange attractor
in Pynchon?s fiction.

------- can you give us a bit on Herero dryads? asking for a friend





Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 03:50:49 -0400
From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>

Did we all remember that this, his fourth novel, or third with a long short
story marketed as a novel in there, is dedicated
to his mother and father?....not life so many dedicating his first or
second to those who gave him life.

The first novel about family is dedicated to his family.

------- Thanks - V's father-son dynamic, CoL49's divorces w/deal-breakers
Pierce's workaholism & seemingly not Mucho's teen girls but LSD. GR sweet
traces of Slothrop's lineage; VL the guy for a change really tries, &
family is a Preterite institution.




Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 09:51:56 +0200
From: Thomas Eckhardt <
------- 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

------- yeah, it's high political content (>40 proof?) but there are
important flavor elements.






Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 04:28:25 -0400
From: 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.


------- Good stuff. Thank you, Mark!






Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 08:29:10 GMT
From: "peterthooper at juno.com"

You couldn't be more wrong.

- it?s not like i didn?t try. (-;

------- being provocative's new on the p-list - what next, sarcasm? Not
from me, though - I avoid that sh*t!