LISS/STPEVR Zoyd in the morning

[Michael Bailey]

From: ish mailian

At first glance, it seems clear enough that Zoyd Wheeler, sleeping
later than usual drifts awake one summer morning in 1984 while
sunlight through a creeping fig that hangs in the widow shines in on
him and while a squadron of blue jays stomp around on his roof.

But readers of Pynchon, of Gravity's Rainbow's first sentence, and of
the dream that may be Pirate's Dream, as much as Shakespeare's
Midsummer Night's Dream may be Bottom's dream, now many anxious years
after, read this first sentence and just go on as if it is a sentence
that reads, "Call me Ralph." No. This sentence demands explication.

Those not fond of exegesis can walk out. Like so many did when Richard
McKeon fixed us on a sentence, a word in Plato,not for a day but for a
term. Or Derrida on his "pharmacy" in the Phaedrus.

But the grammar,  the free indirect style narrative technique, and the
fact that as we read on we slide into Zoyd's internal speech or
thought we slide into and out of his dream and his understanding or
interpretation of the dream and narrative commentary on Zoyd's
interpretation, all these can not be ignored. Like ignoring Pirate's
Dream or Bottoms or the speaker in Poe's The Raven. Note the midnight
is not a dreary midnight but a midnight dreary. And it's midnight.
What day is it? And the speaker is nearly napping when, like that
squadron of blue jays, the speaker, half in a book of romance and half
in a dream, is not quite awakened, and begins to interpret the
confluence of book and dream and mind. Then in stanza two the memory
is tapped.

 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore?
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
??Tis some visitor,? I muttered, ?tapping at my chamber door?
            Only this and nothing more.?

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

The window that Poe will use as portal to these confluences is key to the
poem.

And so is this window in sentence one of VL.

Zoyd drifting awake is the creeping fig in the window.

Like Bottom, like Rip Van Winkle (surely this now common political
reading has value), like Poe's speaker, Zoyd is a dreamer, his mind is
in and out of the 60s, California Dreaming, his High experiences
remembered though window panes of sunshine superman and dear Mr.
Fantasy...with Munchhausen's Munchhausen.

The sentence screams across the page with Whitman's deliberate ambiguity.


—————————————-
————-Zoyd as Ned Bottom.
He’s a hardworking guy. Working class hero
“we’ll meet at Ninny’s Tomb!”

For one thing it’s still morning, early riser in my book. Those doves in
the dream could be the souls of the 290 people aboard Iran Air 655,
Thanatoids in the making.

If he sleeps later than usual, he must usually get up pretty darn early -
the reason he sleeps in is he’s psyching himself up to pull his stunt this
day (“he’d been planning this for weeks” (3)) - usually it’s not as hard
for him to get up for the various gig economy stuff that he does because
even Hector knows he’s not lazy (“it ain’t like you’re lazy or afraid to
work, either” (28))

Here are all the things he does:

Drive to clothing store

Gas up the chainsaw and tousle his hair and get a word to the wise about
his plan from Prairie’s friend Slide

Drive to joint up in the woods

Parley with the Barman (who he played b-ball with in the 6 Rivers
conference (7)) and the metrosexual logger dude

Drive to Ralph, Junior’s venue

Do the jump

Then a certain amount of schmoozing and police paperwork and Hector
Hectoring. As Rod Stewart said, “...police wouldn’t give me no peace.”

All before Ralph, Junior turns on the neon lights at the Cucumber Lounge
“early” (12)) and he goes home to dinner.

But —- where does Whitman come in?

&&&& oh, that first bar he goes to is called The Logjam; logjam is also a
notional notation in Brock Vond’s mind for the anti war/pro pot/civil
rights situations he’s tasked with floating to the mill!

—- also, did you say something about a dog?