Possible Interpretation of the title Vineland

[Corbeau Castrum]

Dear Mr. (Skip)Tracy,

Would you ever consider offering the benefit of the doubt to your interlocutors? That painting in broad strokes is not the same thing as making dogmatic, universalizing claims? Or the possibility that Vineland may be simultaneously a hyper-localized narration of inter-civilizational struggle and also a more general commentary on the fate of the 60s counterculture (and its social, musical, visual, psychotropic, revolutionary, etc., elements), which is, after all, the context that Pynchon wrote Gravity's Rainbow in?

I am only a recent adherent to this mailing list, and I am very grateful for the discussion that has gone on. Perhaps I'm mistaken (and please correct me if I am), but I really am sensing a prickliness and hostility from you, and I do not quite understand why. In any case, I find it to be totally unnecessary.

A tankie (https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=tankie) is a word that was originally used to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain who supported the Soviet suppression of Hungarian protestors in 1956, when they came rolling in with tanks. I first learned of it from a Hong Konger friend involved in the 2019 pro-democracy protests, who used it to describe supporters of the Chinese Communist Party who consumed their propaganda hook, line and sinker (e.g. China's economic imperialism is actually international solidarity with global south proletarians). I use the term also in the context of people whose opposition to the US government runs so deep that they will gladly support authoritarian regimes the US happens to be in conflict with, regardless of what those regimes actually do.

P.S. My "real" name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies of the north, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius :)

On Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026 at 07:17, J Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

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> > On Feb 2, 2026, at 5:01 AM, Corbeau Castrum via Pynchon-l pynchon-l at waste.org wrote:
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> > There is a double movement: evaluating the results of the 60s based on their own stated aims,
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> 
> who are the they in your “their stated aims”
> I was actually alive and graduated from High school in the 60s, went to Woodstock, marched against the war, and it was not some unified political event. It was part of the flow of time and history, there was no they with some universal stated aims
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> > which certainly included revolution and the overthrow of the "capitalist war machine”;
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> for a very small group.
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> > and evaluating the results of the 60s with respect to our own standards, which would include dramatic cultural changes still with us today (although they are receding in certain vital areas, e.g. access to safe and legal abortions). So those moments of attempted cultural and social revolution were simultaneously a failure and a success; but I think we emphasize the failure in order to come to grips with the ever-mounting social violence of our present world.
> > 
> > Unless I missed something, I don't think there was anyone in these messages who was reducing counterculture radicalism and anti-authoritarianism to a distinct category ("hippies") or set of militant actions.
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> I never said there was someone saying that. There have been regular assertions that the essence of Vineland is a look at the “failures of the sixties” in the the words of Mark Kohut. I am arguing that this is all juvenile media language, and that Vineland is a localized look at an internal civilizational struggle full of commentary on themes of media culture vs, reality , specifics about the ruthless anti-constitutional behavior of the Government and how it impacted real people caught in the jaws of the culture war. Acting as though young people and communes and political action groups could have somehow changed the culture without other parts of the culture changing is absurd. These are deep historic patterns. In most ways Pynchon seems to be arguing that the system is too big, has too much systemic momentum to self correct.
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> > In our increasingly upsetting world, we must always be careful of self-righteous virtue signaling,
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> good that someone is qualified to sort that out. Should I say some Hail Marys?
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> > anger that other people supposedly can't see what we can, our belief that we must know better. We must be wary of the powerful polemics of tankies and other anti-American absolutists.
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> The only thing I am angry about is mass murder. You think that is ok? What is a tankie? And who is the "we” you are talking about? Is Corbeau Castrum your real name?Are you on the verge of anti- American absolutism. To me America is just a word. I prefer Turtle Island of which i feel myself to be a loving part.
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> > With this in mind, there is a great piece in the LRB by Adam Shatz, in which he tries "to love America with sorrow." (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n02/adam-shatz/another-country).
> > 
> > Laura, thank you for your response regarding Pynchon's misogynistic tropes. I always have trouble knowing how to handle the representation of violence (especially sexual violence) in art: to what extent does it function as critique versus enjoyment and provocation. I think about Lolita, and the fact that Nabokov explicitly did not want any girls on the cover, a desire that has been repeatedly ignored by publishers ever since, noting also that he was likely abused by his uncle as a child in Russia. In other words, the question is, to what extent should we hold Nabokov (and Pynchon) responsible for the way their art is enjoyed by the sadistic and the perverse? I have no good answer, but I am reminded of the way George Floyd's murder was represented in Power (2024), Yance Ford's documentary about the police. The video was mostly blacked out/censored, while the audio remained—an interesting and productive way of showing the shock of the violence without overwhelming us visually; and perhaps there is also a symbolic association between the color black and death-giving police violence, which leads us back to Pynchon's ultimate statement (in my reading) on blackness in Gravity's Rainbow:
> > 
> > "He had not meant to offend sensibilities, only to show the others, decent fellows all, that their feelings about blackness were tied to feelings about shit, and feelings about shit to feelings about putrefaction and death" (280, penguin).
> > 
> > On Monday, February 2nd, 2026 at 05:02, J Tracy brook7 at sover.net wrote:
> > 
> > > Actually There is no Vineland CA. There is a school and school district named Vineland in Kern County, but no town. Kern County is too far south to correspond to where Zoyd grew up where the closest coastal town was Santa Cruz, which would put him in the north end of the San Joaquin Valley at least up to Madera or Los Banos.
> > > 
> > > I agree there is the sense of a post apocalyptic setting with Vineland but… not sure the possibility of revolutionary change is entirely past. That leaves out the empire’s own potential for self destruction. and the fast fading enthusiasm for the MAGA version of stupid. Of course I’m a die hard portfolio-carrying anti-fascist, bi-regionalist, mutual aid no war-tax type.. As for apocalypse of some version or other, the planned prison camps under Reagan noted in the novel, do point in that terrifying direction and if you lived in El Salvador or Nicaragua at the time it was as real as your murdered family members.
> > > 
> > > Going on about the failures of the 60s or reducing it to SDS radicals or what are called “hippies” is a thin analysis IMO. The cultural changes were large and socially important and the good common sense of inclusiveness, opposition to imperial wars etc. is as obvious as ever. As is the power of the capitalist war machine and the ideology of ethnic and ideological cleansing. So is the creepy politics of sentimentalized patriotism. And the manipulative power of corporate media, then centered in TV, is still a core battleground. The internal battle between shutting up and knuckling under, or refusing and saying no, no...my child is not the property of your filthy blood drenched empire with its army of thanatoids ,... that internal struggle continues.
> > > 
> > > The forbidden topic is still wherever the genocide is happening, and where the new scapegoats come on line. That is where the arrests happen, the secret jails, the brownshirts in the streets, the bombed hospitals, the starving children. The jokes change, the look changes, the paths of retreat and escape and profiteering change, the faces of the casualties change, but the trillionaire techno-warfare led march to oblivion continues and the planet gets hotter, because the entire civilization runs on fossil fuels with no plan b and no planet b. We think we are smarter than starting a nuclear showdown, better than the empires of the past, we even claim this is a government of,by and for the people, but we are not making much of a case for it.
> > > 
> > > This book is about that very large internal civilizational war. All Pynchon books are about that war. (and other things)
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> > > The way P uses the word hippie in Vineland is unfortunate, There never were some life form called hippies, no defineable culture, no consistent set of values, no lifestyle. no politics. And this imaginary grouping is no more responsible for the turns of US history than anyone else. It was just a trivializing media label, clusters of fashion trends, musical tastes, drug preferences, the ongoing search for another way to live in America, the eternal balancing between conformity and non-conformity. What are called hippies were kids from the suburbs and kids from rural communities, college students taught to think and dubious about the constitutionality of the CIA and CIA wars, disgruntled or enthusisatic academics, grocery store clerks, dishwashers, pot sellers, communalists, Jesus Freaks, feminists, mechanics, the endless pursuit of media attention of movie hits, of best sellers, of military contracts. What part of US society had no longhairs, no punks, no leftists, no dropouts? Grocers, civil rights agitators, carpenters, art freaks, high schools, hospitals, junkies, japanese gardeners, alcoholics, aerospace engineers, cops, renters, businesses the whole fucking glorious and insane and criminal enterprise of America in constant transformation with a thousand verions of what is possible or impossible. The labels , including the label Hippie as Pynchon uses it particulalrly in the early part of the novel are more misleading than informative. I say this as one who lived in Arcata in the 80s and 90s and almost never heard counterculture people call themselves or identify others as hippies. There were dead heads, rastas, teachers, artists, students, ecologists, … not a matter of labels but lives lived.
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> > > The actual world is a side by side jumble of cartoon characters and infinitely subtle compexities. That actual world is , for my money, most realized within P’s writing in the internal struggles of his most invested characters. The complex absurdities of the social and historic dynamics places us and them in a recognizeably real place. The south park caricatures he summons amuse us with their cultural resonance and satiric edge, but if South Park Trump has sex with Satan, our souls are implicated in the tryst, our money is being used by our american Nazis, our grandchildren are being charged for the weapons we buy on their credit., our politicians are being bribed by the genocidal fascists in Israel and America. Resistance is not a public or intellectual position, it is where the rubber meets the road. It is not what or who we blame. It is what we do or do not do.
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> > > Part of what i am saying is the real value of satire happens whan we point our criticism and skepticism at ourselves since our own lives are the arena af greatest possible change or even the only possible change within our selves, our community.
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> > > So that moves me from 2 cents to 2 bits on Vineland which I now find myself re-reading. I can think of worse fates for a Sunday aternoon. God bless the brave souls in Minnesota and accross the country who actually risk their lives for their neighbors.
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> > > > On Feb 1, 2026, at 9:04 AM, Mark Kohut mark.kohut at gmail.com wrote:
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> > > > Not her name, her character in the fiction....Plath's “ happens when we point thEvery Woman adores a Fascist/ the boot in the face/the brute, brute heart" ....and her role in the novel...
> > > > 
> > > > Her name is Free 'N-Easy.....
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> > > > On Sun, Feb 1, 2026 at 8:51 AM Corbeau Castrum <filsducorbeau at pm.me mailto:filsducorbeau at pm.me> wrote:
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> > > > > I'm super onboard with the Viking Vinland reading of the title. One additional thing to note about the Slow Learner introduction is Pynchon's profound misgiving with the aesthetics of the apocalypse, which is very present in GR. Check out these following quotes:
> > > > > 
> > > > > "A pose I found congenial in those days – fairly common, I hope, among pre-adults – was that of somber glee at any idea of mass destruction or decline [...] But the distance and grandiosity of this led me to short-change the humans in the story" (13).
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> > > > > "My reading at the time also included many Victorians, allowing World War I in my imagination to assume the shape of that attractive nuisance so dear to adolescent minds, the apocalyptic showdown" (18).
> > > > > 
> > > > > So the focus on missed opportunities, which is of course very present in GR, is reframed in Vineland without the apocalyptic vibe, even if everything sinister remains ever present. Or rather, it seems to me that Vineland is "post-apocalyptic" in a sense, the opportunities for revolution are passed and yet life still goes on.
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> > > > > What is the controversy regarding Frenesi's name?
> > > > > On Sunday, February 1st, 2026 at 13:20, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
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> > > > > > Again, in a more local, more Thomas Paine-like look at the failure of the sixties , Pynchon actually wrote in the Intro to Slow Learner, (1984 the year) that one of the reasons---the only one I remember him fingering--
> > > > > > for the failure of the New Left to keep America changing in the right direction--anti-authoritarian-- was the New Left's failure to involve the working class, to work for change for THEM....They were left
> > > > > > to be cut loose in our polity.......
> > > > > > And, of course, there is Frenesi and all that controversy of meaning....
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 8:59 PM J Tracy <brook7 at sover.net mailto:brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
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> > > > > > > Vineland is the only P novel where I have not probed very much at the intentionality of the title. The obvious reference to Leif Erickson’s name for the north american continent seems to fit in with his larger vision, but shift the focus from east coast( V, GR) as power center to west coast as the scene of a last stand against encroaching fascism in 1984. It retains his ominous use of the letter V also perhaps quietly refraining TV as theme. Over time in P’s work we find there has been a similar east west traverse of the continent by the Traverse family whose names and lives echo both the land ( Prairie, Lake,) and winding paths of vines as suggested.
> > > > > > > The wildness of M&D and the Powerful Light of ATD have given way to artificial TV light; empire has prevailed over student uprisings, investigative critics, and infiltrated unions. The last outpost of resistance is family, the occupation of the land, the memory and legacy of resistance along with the memory of a less mediated and monetized life.
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> > > > > > > In the passage you chose, fascism is named and the names of fascists and resistors listed as the focus of discourse among elders. That continues. The names change but the questions have not even faded with time.
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> > > > > > > > On Jan 29, 2026, at 5:29 PM, Corbeau Castrum via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org mailto:pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
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> > > > > > > > I don't know if the best way of approaching the question of name interpretation here is through direct correlation. There are, of course, names with easily interpretable puns or meanings (Myron Grunton, Dewey Gland), but to me, much of Pynchon's writing revolves around the production of linguistic atmospheres and networks, relying on an intertextual vision of literature that understands that "books are made out of books" (following Cormac McCarthy). With this in mind, I'm drawn to one of the most powerful paragraphs in the novel, its ultimate statement (imo) on the era of resistance and revolution in the 60, which I will copy below:
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> > > > > > > > "And other grandfolks could be heard arguing the perennial question of whether the United States still lingered in a prefascist twilight, or whether that darkness had fallen long stupefied years ago, and the light they thought they saw was coming only from millions of Tubes all showing the same bright-colored shadows. One by one, as other voices joined in, the names began – some shouted, some accompanied by spit, the old reliable names good for hours of contention, stomach distress, and insomnia – Hitler, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Hoover, Mafia, CIA, Reagan, Kissinger, that collection of names and their tragic interweaving that stood not constellated above in any nightwide remotenesses of light, but below, diminished to the last unfaceable American secret, to be pressed, each time deeper, again and again beneath the meanest of random soles, one blackly fermenting leaf on the forest floor that nobody wanted to turn over, because of all that lived, virulent, waiting, just beneath" (371-2).
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> > > > > > > > So while the name "Vineland" may not literally mean Weed Atman or Prairie, both names are connected to this vision of a rhizome of stems, strands, and connections at once ecological (life-bringing) and evil (death-bringing). Note also the advancement of this ecological metaphor (material) over the drawn constellations of the stars (idealistic).
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> > > > > > > --
> > > > > > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
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> > > --
> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > > --
> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
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