Customer Reviews

Vineland

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I'll admit right off the bat that this is one of my favorite novels. It's packed with more sly nods to American pop-culture of the last 8 decades than Dennis Miller could ever hope to cram into a whole week of Monday Night Football. The prose is cumbersome and labyrinthine, but Pynchon rewards those with the patience to stick it out. If you are willing to work your way through this dizzying journey to the heart of left-wing politics in America, there's a lot to be learned.

Like I said, Pynchon's style is really frustrating at times; clauses hang in places one wouldn't normally find them, long phrases get stuffed in parenthetical asides, and sentences--beautiful though they are--sprawl all over like lines of Whitman or Kerouac. What we lose in ease, though, we make up for in depth. The prose of "Vineland" almost forces you to slow down and savor it, and, given the wealth of historical and cultural moments to which Pynchon either pays subtle homage or deals a slight blow, you NEED to slow down.

This matter of style is directly related to the critique that Pynchon develops, through the course of the novel, of the Woodstock generation. "Vineland" charts the counter-culture's successes and failures in a very fair way, and measures the 1960s against the larger tradition of radical politics in America dating back to the first-half of the twentieth century.

Rather than narrowmindedly berate the hippies for their rejection of traditional moralities (as a whole ugly slew of right-wing critics has done, from Michel Houellebecq to William Bennett and Rush Limbaugh), Pynchon's problems with sixties radicalism revolve around the gut-instinct, spur-of-the-moment flightiness of the era. What was needed, the novel seems to suggest, was more thought and study, less immediate action, and a better understanding of the long term--all of which was total anathema to a generation hell-bent on living for the moment and equally convinced of the revolutionary potential in doing so.

Against this, the advice given to Prairie Wheeler (whose search for her lost mother sends us on this trans-generational and -historical thrill ride) to study the things she doesn't quite get, is good advice for anyone who wants to slog through this book. Pynchon knows a hell of a lot of important stuff and he's not afraid to show it; however, obscure references should not be a reason to discard "Vineland," but rather a reason to open an encyclopedia, to find out more about a sort of hidden history of the left half of the USA.

I've made the whole thing sound very dry and political, but there are other forces at play in "Vineland" that simply can't be categorized or explained: mysterious, Godzilla-like footprints that flatten buildings, for example, or ninja death-touches gone astray. And this is to say nothing of the sheer humor of this book, which is off the charts from the outset, when an aging ex-hippie jumps through a plate-glass window to ensure that his government disability checks don't stop.

If you are interested in where the 1960s got us, where they didn't get us, and what we can learn from it all, or if you just want a demanding but rewarding and humorous read, then this book is a must.

In Vineland, Thomas Pynchon takes us back to the Reagan era of 1984 California.

The book begins with Zoyd Wheeler waking up on a fine summer's morning to some Froot Loops with a little Nestle's Quik on top. Zoyd lives in Vineland County, California, a fictional, forest-filled refuge for ageing flower children. And Zoyd play the part of ageing flower child to the hilt. He is a parttime keyboard player, handyman and fulltime marijuana grower who retains his disability benefits by jumping through glass windows once each year on television.

Zoyd has become a single parent to his teenage daughter Prairie since the mysterious disappearance of his wife, Prairie's mother, Frenesi Gates. A radical filmmaker during the 60s, Frenesi allowed herself to be seduced by Brock Vond, a federal prosecutor who was responsible for Frenesi's transformation from hippie radical to FBI informant.

Two decades after Frenesi's "disappearance," Zoyd is still looking for her, as is Vond, as is Prairie. The plot then becomes dense and tangled with flashbacks and flash forwards. Much of the book is simply gross exaggeration that is fairly preposterous and, at times, very funny.

Pynchon has a penchant for working symbolic meaning into his titles. Vineland is no exception. Vineland is, of course, the name of the mythical California setting of the book, but it is also the name Leif Ericsson gave to North America. As such, it was the name for a land untouched by human hands.

The exact opposite happens to be true of 1984 California, as anyone who's ever visited the area knows full well. Vineland exhibits none of the experimental prose that made Gravity's Rainbow so famous. In fact, the language employed in this book is flat and simple.

For some reason, this flatness seems to work. Essentially, Vineland tells the story of an aftermath that seems inevitable when viewed in retrospect and, as such, it is Pynchon's darkest book.

Pynchon celebrates the sixties but goes on to lament their aftermath. He celebrates America while condemning the way its inhabitants have been destroying themselves.

With Vineland, Pynchon took one step closer to hell than he did with even Gravity's Rainbow, becoming ninety-nine percent suicide and one percent nostalgia.

Vineland's one ray of hope shines in the character of Prairie, yet even Prairie shines none too brightly. During one of the book's most pivotal moments the only thing she can think of to do is to sing the Gilligan's Island theme song.

Vineland is Pynchon's only book dealing with the present. While the ludicrousness of Home Shopping, MTV and malls have not passed unnoticed, Pynchon does see more humor than unrelieved bleakness in the present state of America. But he is worried, that is plain to see.

While more bleak and barren than Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland at least holds out a few rays of hope.

This book has always been shamefully underrated, and I've never been sure why. As Pynchon's first new published work after Gravity's Rainbow (not counting his intro to Slow Learner and letters to various Northern California local papers written under the pseudonym, Wanda Tinaski) it must have come as a shock. Where was the dazzling virtuosity? Where was GR's fascination with hidden conspiracies, inanimate processes and their ineluctable creep into and over human life?
But this book has nearly all the complexity of GR, just hidden in a narrative so perfectly crafted that you barely notice as it slides from time to time, place to place and most signigicantly, person to person. It is also a retelling of a set of Greek or other myths (especially in all the lands of the dead that characters must enter and re-emerge from) or a fable of the dream of American freedom - a dream much older than the hippies. And no less than GR, and perhaps more honestly, Vineland takes a very hard look at what it means to be free or not. It is in many ways an answer to GR, taking up it's concerns and treating them forthrightly. But instead of laying the blame on inanimate processes of technology, here Pynchon looks as what "actual" people do, conciously and unconciously, to create our world, and he is not afraid to lay the blame squarely on people who insist on attempting to control others, and finding hope in those who wish only to live their lives.
Which brings up the point of the whole book. Without question, Pynchon's strongest, truest characters live in Vineland and it is for them and them alone that it is written. In his intro to Slow Learner, Pynchon mentions how much more important good characters are than clever ideas, and I have to agree. There are no clever conceits (like GRs rocket) unifying this book, and that may disappoint some, but the characters are as alive as any in fiction.
It's true that to like this book, you already have to agree with Pychon's politics, more or less. But they aren't much different from what we're taught to believe America is supposed to be about; personal freedom and responsibility, melting pot, no aristocracy, level playing field, etc. etc. I bet there are some "conservatives", especially out west, who could get with this book. But eastern tighty-whitey types - forget it.
Most of all, Vineland is the book where Pynchon's big, sad, wise, loving heart is most to the fore, and this is why it's my favorive of his books. There were many hints of it in GR, and it lives on in the not-quite-as-succesful Mason & Dixon, but Vineland is where it shines. Such stuff may be too obvious to be chic, but to me it's as true and real as anything ever gets.

As most critics state, this is his least successful novel. Yet it is Pynchon nonetheless. This is not to say he cannot write putrid prose, yet he is not one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century without reason.

Vineland is a novel about how America, even though it has admitted its errors, refuses to change in order to improve itself. Though the novel takes place in 1984, most of the action takes place in the 1960's and the reader instantly realizes how little America has changed and how we are making the same mistakes, for whatever reason, a mere 20 years later.

Pynchon's intent with this work is easy enough to see yet how successful he was at bringing his ideology to the page and making it accessible and thus effective is another matter. It seems the whole work was rushed and Pynchon, aware of the fact, was content upon hiding behind his fragmented narrative, yet another reverse tale, a la Crying Lot. However, Vineland is chalk full of wacky characters, tongue-in-cheek jokes, and Pynchonian songs dispersed throughout as anyone familiar with the Hamster would expect.

Don't get me wrong, this is the real thing, the full Pynch, yet not vintage Tommy. If you decide to work with this novel, use The Modern World's website on Vineland as a guide, it is quite useful.

Don't read VINELAND expecting a linear narrative about people who, oh, manage the office. Instead, be ready to follow cartoon characters, often scarred by the turmoil of the Sixties, whose stories are part nightmare, part larky fantasy, and part political commentary. Then, be ready as their stories lead to other characters whose experiences double back or leap forward, forming a loose web of complex digressions that are fascinating, troubling, and, shall we say, silly, hm?

In addition, don't expect consistency. Read VINELAND and see one character die but rejoin the action. See another escape from jail and the evil Brock Vond, only to reappear in that jail again (same time same place, as far as I could tell) to suffer Brock's brutal dominance. But, who cares? VINELAND is a web of interaction, not some boring story of simple cause and effect.

In some respects, VINELAND is that old saw-a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But this time, it's not Churchill describing Russia; it's the lyrical John Updike channeling George Carlin on a great and hilarious riff.

At the same time, THREE-CHEERS for the Pynch, who ties everything together in the final chapter in a neat post-modern package. There, you will find his clear and amusing narrative explanations for the bizarre DL and Takeshi, the toxic Brock, and the earnest stoner Zoyd. There's his silly overview of the story-"Oh, the usual journey from point A to point B." Pynch even tells you what happens to Desmond, the feral family dog, who seemed lost forever.

VINELAND has a singular, playful, and awesome associative style, with Pynchon in total control. And since it's Pynchon, he tells you. Indeed, this reader found on page 160 in the original hardcover: "A young woman with regular features, wearing a draped white gown, appeared out of the airport crowds, leaned her forearm on Takeshi's shoulder, whispered, `Watch the paranoia, please!' and then disappeared again." Read the book and you'll see this is Pynchon, having fun, with Lady Literature reminding him to set limits.

A really terrific novel and well worth the effort.

New rule: you are NOT allowed to refer to this novel as "lesser Pynchon" just because it came out seventeen years after Gravity's Rainbow and everyone was expecting something more along the lines of 2 Gravity 2 Rainbow. I'm putting my foot down on this one. This idea--that there's some sort of platonic ideal of Pynchonosity from which any deviation is a step down--is absurd. Is Vineland his best work? Maybe; maybe not. But the point is, it's not a rhetorical question. You could make a darn good case for it.

Now, I do have one biggish criticism of Vineland, and one smallish criticism. The biggish criticism is this: Frenesi's redemption at the end comes WAY too easily, and seemingly with no particular effort on her part. I'm all about redemption in a general sense, but her great betrayal is central to the novel, and to just sort of wave it away at the end doesn't feel very satisfying. The smallish criticism is this: there are several (as far as I can tell) totally unresolved plot threads; i.e., the Godzilla business and the airplane hijacking thing. The *extremely* brief mention of these issues at the end really isn't even enough to qualify as desultory. These are narrative slip-ups; there are no two ways about it.

That said, I still think Vineland is pretty fantastic from start to finish. This is the first book of what I think of as Pynchon Mk2, in which the characters are as important as the concepts. In the introduction to Slow Learner, P expresses his undying hatred of "Entropy," partially because, in his view, he put the cart before the horse: he had a concept and forced the characters to adhere to it rather than the other way round. While this is less the case in his early novels (in my devotion to which I bow to no one), you still sort of see a bit of that going on. Not so in Vineland: the ideas are important, but the characters are perfectly integrated. The two parts are neatly balanced.

And what characters! Zoyd is surely the most purely likable character that Pynchon had written to date, and Prairie--well, who would have imagined from his previous work that he could so effectively write a young teenage girl? Nobody, that's who! Then there are DL and Takeshi, whose relationship is one of the greatest pleasures of ANY Pynchon novel. And what can one say of Brock Vond, his best-ever villain? Given this concentration of great characters, it's hard to say how the novel can be described as lesser anything.

It's not just the characters, though; the postmodern setting, though obviously more limited in scope than Gravity's Rainbow, is if anything more effectively realized. I hate to break this to you, but: ninjas are more folklore than actual fact, and the martial-arts-movie kind of ninjitsu that DL practices is, I think we can safely say, made up from whole cloth. And yet, here she is! Because we're dealing with a simulated world, in which these pop culture images ARE reality. There's no Godzilla in the so-called "real world" either, unless I have been badly misinformed. And let's not forget about the Thanatoids, either. They're not really there, you know. And yet--there they are! Prairie even becomes friends with one! Who else could do something so simultaneously inexplicable, funny, and haunting and make it work?

Look at the series of increasingly surreal biopic titles, culminating in my favorite, "Peewee Herman in The Robert Musil Story." We're well and truly through the looking glass, people! Everything is mediated through the screen. The way the flashback story is told--through a complex series of stories and stories-within-stories viewed by Prairie through old film footage--is simply dazzling. We are dealing with a virtuoso here, folks.

And all of this on top of a genuine, old-school utopia--"Vineland the Good." That's what really makes it, in my opinion. In spite of the surreal, postmodern atmosphere, the novel remains firmly grounded in--well, not "reality," exactly, but in something authentic. Although the simulated world is clearly part of what did in the People's Republic of Rock'n'Roll, and by extension the spirit of the sixties, that doesn't mean that it's all bad or that there's nothing worth fighting for. Look: there may only be ninjas because this is a media-saturated environment, but the fact remains that DL's ninja skillz come in awfully handy. It's a tradeoff, but the point is, the world isn't nothing but a barren, desolate hellscape.

Some people criticize the ending as overly Hollywood-ish. The fools! On the one hand, yes, obviously, part of the reason it ends this way is because that's how a movie would end. But on the other, it is quite apparent that Pynchon is really very fond of these characters, and that prevents him from despairing, somehow. Look at Against the Day's ending--same thing. In the midst of all this suffering and oppression and artificiality, somehow, always, there is a light that never goes out. That could be his credo.

The first four full sentences on page 138 of the 1990 hardcover alone are almost too bleeding good. And what about Hector freaking out on the table in Bodhi Dharma Pizza, with his priceless put-down of the night manager? Or Prairie commandeering the kitchen in the retreat of the Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives and heading into the freezer for the glowing Variety Loaves? Vato and Blood driving at night to the theme from Psycho? The colossal dopechunk in Zee Dubya's house?! Echoes of absquatulation??!! Well I could go on but let me just say instead that this wonderful book has as much astonishing writing in it as anything else Mister Pynchon--God bless him--has produced. Reading through the opinions here it surprises me that so many people don't get Vineland, but then again maybe it shouldn't.

Get a load of this: My comments here are dated April 5th, a Wednesday, but actually I didn't put the last bit in until two days later, Friday the 7th. So there I am right, later that night watching telly in bed with one eye and re-reading the funny bits in the book under review with the other when what comes on at 11.30 but the episode of The Simpsons where Homer is fired by Mr. Burns and gets a job as a salesman in Boris' Car Loft. Meanwhile Marge writes a racy whaling novel called The Harpooned Heart which is a smash with the locals. The character based on Homer goes for a pint in Moab's--I love that. Then things go sideways for a while because who suddenly shows up and phones in a blurb but Old Ruggles himself, and not just animated footage of him either, his actual voice too. I couldn't believe it, I was looking at a cartoon version of Thomas Pynchon and hearing his real New York accent! He was wearing a brown paper bag over his head, presumably to conceal his features and maintain his usual anonymity. Mindblown I was--this being a Friday night remember--and only too happy to concede that this piece of theatre put my own finishing touches in the outhouse, to semi-quote myself and steal yet again from the great Charles Portis, who everybody should read too.

But just one more thing and then I'll shut my yap: It seems to me that whenever Zoyd Wheeler stumbles into view in this novel the writing becomes especially focused, lively, funny and, well, tender. I could be wrong here but I'm guessing Mister Pynchon really likes this dude and his affection translates into some of Vineland's most unforgettable prose. Take the chapter where Zoyd flies to Honolulu to check up on Frenesi as a for instance: the descriptive passages here, full of looping, intricate sentences, deliver up the pathos and hard comedy of his plight to perfection. The dialogue zips along too and Zoyd even gets to crack a Steve McGarrett joke. As I said, it's easy to see where Mister Pynchon's sympathies lie and you can't help rooting for the frazzled ol' dope fiend. Hapless, dishevelled, a little windblown and feckless maybe but basically honest, Zoyd is the unsung heart of this great novel. His charm for me, aside from the fact that he named his dog Desmond and isn't above retrieving smokable butts from the night before, is that he is the only character here who doesn't seem to be motivated by some compelling social or political reason, he just rolls with the punches as best he can. Who needs compelling reasons anyway? They just make your face pointy.

This was my first stab at Pynchon's work and I've been fascinated by the man ever since. After nine years, a lot of this novel escapes me. I remember only basics of the plot, but there are sequences and phrases that return to me occasionally like fragments of dreams, and the unforgettable main characters are still fresh in my mind. I'd reccomend this before tackling Gravity's Rainbow or any of his 'big' novels (I find it more accesible than the Crying of Lot 49, though that's also a good starter). Aside from the erudition and intricate plotting, the reason most readers are drawn to Pynchon is the sense of wonder he evokes, the feeling that he could take you absolutely anywhere (and will), and the dizzying sensation that hits when he loses you in the wilderness of his prose and startles you back with a scene of stunning imagination and comic timing. It only takes a few pages for you to realize you will never forget Zoyd Wheeler, Prairie and Hector. The maze that follows is never too daunting with such colorful characters along for the ride. Well worth the work and well worth the time!

If you're willing to forget what "A Pynchon Book" is supposed to be, there's a very good chance you'll like Vineland. It is not absurdly long, it does not move haphazardly from one character to the next, you do not need an encyclopedia to understand the references, and guests will not be impressed to see it on your bookshelf. Pretend it was written by someone else and enjoy the book for what it is.

If you have never read Pynchon, you should begin here. This book is not as complicated or distant as V, Gravity's Rainbow or Mason&Dixon, but it does get you used to his style. Geographically and time wise you don't have some of the extremes you can encounter in his other novels.

And don't think that someone else can tell you what a Pynchon novel is about. It's about what you take from it, and the questions you end up asking about the world you live in.

As to criticism that this guy doesn't know how to write, give me a break, that's like someone going to see a play by Shakespeare during his life and complaining that he didn't know how to write.

Pynchon is not a easy read ever, but if you want something more than a book you'll pour through and forget in a week, try it.