ninjettes... karmic reckonings...mama mia style 3 way paternity...pretty good

Sometimes a book feels like it was written just for you

Vineland is an extremely good book which commits the grave sin of not being perfect in comparison to Pynchon's other novels. It's all here: the characters, the absurdity, the little Pynchonian musical interludes- it just doesn't connect in the same way that Gravity's Rainbow or Inherent Vice connected (Zoyd/Hector are basically the trial version of Doc/Bigfoot from IV, but they're charming in their own right, too). What sets this book apart from the author's other works and keeps it from becoming forgettable is that this is easily the most sentimental Pynchon I've read. At the heart of this convoluted, deliriously satirical novel is the story of a girl, Prairie, searching for the mother that abandoned her before she was old enough to remember her. It's quite a nice story if you strip away the weirdness.

Also, Paul Thomas Anderson (aka the only director ballsy enough to adapt Pynchon) has said that this is his favorite of the author's novels, and it definitely isn't unfilmable, so we'll just have to wait and see...

the only thing i’m looking to get from the lectures about this thing is understanding

Dazed and Confused

Am I now a part of the Establishment? You know, too instep with The Man, man. Or maybe I've lost too many brain cells on some mean partying long ago to truly get Pynchon.

I've read Gravity's Rainbow, Inherent Vice and now Vineland. Only the first one could I not stand--what, with its shit-eating grins [literally], its patent pedophilia and insane incest.

Reading Vineland--and to a lesser degree Inherent Vice--is like being dropped into a time and place, being surrounded by a multitude of uber colorful characters, some erudite humor and a far out aura: like, the novel is bitchin' with that groovy feel of the late 60s, West Coast hippy, drug, peace and love culture. I mean, the experience is: Right On, man. But, none of the characters is developed with real depth and the story arc... well..., man, I'd like, need a crazy stash of weed to get it, you dig?

Сразу признаюсь, что мне было довольно сложно понять этот роман Пинчона. Действие этой политической сатиры происходит с конца шестидесятых до восьмидесятых и чтобы понимать, в какие болевые точки автор жалит, нужно знать, о чём идёт речь. Я довольно поверхностно знаю и политические реалии того времени, и культуру хиппи, и этот роман немного расширил мои горизонты.
Сюжет, если в двух словах - поиск мамы дочерью, брошенной ею во младенчестве, обрастает невероятным количеством тем - музыка, критика телевидения и киноиндустрии, Никсон, Рейган, но центральной темой все же является молодежная субкультура 60-х-70-х. Хиппи, "дети цветов" - очевидно, для Пинчона очень близкая, пережитая лично тема. Он и иронизирует над наивностью и инфантильностью их взглядов, весьма специфическим протестом, предполагающим уход в эзотерику, мистицизм, попытки достичь нирваны, как правило, достигаемой не духовными практиками, а с применением наркотических веществ, и он сочувствует им, описывая противостояние с государственной машиной с ее мощью подавления свобод. Но есть при этом, какая-то невысказанность, несостыкованность, дающая ощущение хаоса, нарастающего с какими-то непонятными танатоидами, ниндзеттами и увенчивающимся Республикой Рок-н-ролла. Хаос плавно перетекает в абсурд.
Протест хиппи был таким же: неясным по целям, хаотичным, спонтанным. Война во Вьетнаме была ее катализатором. Хиппи, как внезапно возникли, так же внезапно исчезли. На смену бунту пришел конформизм.

Ex-hippies gather ‘round the campfire to tell each other stories of how they fought and lost the war against the fascist Man as they drift through the Reagan years, and if they exaggerate ‘em, well, that’s OK, ‘cuz they’ve got each other and the future, so why get caught up on the details? The line between pop culture and reality is blurrier than it’s ever been before, celebrities are rewriting history and private eyes are on the trail of Godzilla, but that doesn’t matter when you’re dancing, now does it? In 20 years this might be my fave Pynchon, I think it’ll age better than his others.

Being consistently told that this was weaksauce and Pynchon’s worst and then experiencing how it actually turned out for myself is enough to get me to not trust lit nerds ever again. As always with Pynchon, an incredibly satisfying blast of high octane fun that’s inseparable from the class and cultural politics [and their relation to history] the man boldly concerns his art with. This one in particular is probably his most traditionally linear and works almost as a straightforward genre thriller more than any of his other books, while simultaneously maintaining that sense of rollicking free associative logic that so addictively defines Pynchon’s style for me. This is as stimulating and formally accomplished as his more “major” works and I do think history will critically vindicate it when we’re further removed from the ripple effects of the cultural period that Pynchon maximally details in this book.

You probably don’t need me to tell you that in the past decade or so 80s revivalism and nostalgia has been all over the place, and reading “Vineland” in context of the world in 2022 almost makes this book act as a post-hoc meta exercise in regards to America’s modern romanticization of that decade. Almost everything culture idolizes about the 80s is absent from this book, instead of a world of glamorous neon it’s a world of oppressive Reagan era policies and the continuing effects of Nixon's drug war and the past resonating from the hippie era and Vietnam. This book centers around the faded glory days and nostalgia of the children of the sixties, whose burgeoning revolution was buried under the following decades of state repression and cultural deadening. A lot of what I got out of this book is how the political apparatus both figuratively and literally beats the morale out of countercultural movements, resulting either in people like Zoyd who settle down into a sort of vague half-apathetic liberalism as a result of decades of systemic injustice, or people like Frenesi, who realize their individual pursuits against the system will not stop it and opt instead to work within the more direct bounds of the machine. But at the same time this may be Pynchon's most optimistic work yet, one about generations carrying the torch from one era to the next and how a revolutionary spirit can keep burning even when power structures close in like a fist.

This book's formal structure operates in perfect harmony with the narrative itself and acts as its backbone in a chaotic, back-and-forwards time jump narration style. The frenetic hopping from voice to voice and time to time picks up momentum like a tornado coming into existence before it climaxes in the center of the novel, the story of what happened to Weed Atman and the 24fps and the conspiracy surrounding the College of the Surf [which is some of the best and wildest stuff I've read from Pynchon yet]. This time-fracturing chaos narrative work fits neatly into the story's thematic bulk, because this is essentially a tale about a bunch of people trying to contextualize Time in the way they understand it and their relationships to past experiences and the failed futures promised by bygone memories. The amount of times this jumps from one character's story to another's, with almost no room to breathe, really adds a lot of entertainment value in trying to keep up and eventually inevitably getting swept away in the tide of voices that make up this huge cast. In many ways, but especially this one, this book feels like a younger, more digestible sibling of "Gravity's Rainbow" and may even act as a better primer to that book than "Lot 49".

A rock solid thematic core of the novel that I got out of this was the counterculture's existence in its relation to the opposition of fascism, and how fascism will either crush and demoralize these movements directly or, if that cannot be done, insidiously assimilate their ideas into the fabric of the system. The world "Vineland" portrays is one where popular culture and the state have rebranded revolutionary ideas into liberal gestures at change that help no one, instead opting to uphold a nebulously defined status quo. And this is possibly the most directly anti-statist novel I've read from TRP yet - cops are constantly portrayed as hypocritical thugs vying for their piece of the pie over dignity and using force to violate people's rights. Whereas most of Pynchon's other novels portray the capitalist apparatus as sort of an "invisible hand" governing the lives of everyday people, the hegemony is more directly interrogated in "Vineland", where we not only get a glimpse into the psyche of a ruthless federal prosecutor/police in Brock Vond, but also where the neoliberal government takes its most direct role in directly influencing the lives of every character in this book with a protagonistic role. It doesn't come as a surprise, then, that "Vineland" is the one Pynchon novel written closest to the actual correspondence of its time period, and the urgency of the violence begat by the Reagan administration can be felt vividly pulsing through every page of this work, something TRP hammers in with just how dedicated this one is to showing bourgeoise elites and their lapdogs for what they really are.

I have to mention the characters here because they in particular are what make me question what people are smoking when they insist this is Pynchon's weakest novel. The characters in "Vineland" are some of Pynchon's most thoroughly detailed and humanistic, ESPECIALLY the women who are undoubtedly Pynchon's best - prime examples being Frenesi the complex, multifaceted individual who is almost impossible to get a moral pin on, DL who is savvy and intellectual yet prone to human mistakes as she navigates a traditionally male profession, and finally Prairie, who is determined, headstrong and capable while also being completely believable as a teenager, and also embodies the novel's optimistic ultimate statement that the revolutionary torch can be passed down onto future generations with the amount of strength and desire for truth and independence she seeks as a core part of her character. Pynchon takes shots at hegemonic male sexuality and its relationship to dominance and violence, and how these things are used by men to control women and how women like DL can see through these patriarchal notions. And I just LOVE the fact that Zoyd, a man who is set up to be protagonist from the beginning, takes a huge narrative backseat for hundreds of pages to focus mainly on these three women, who end up becoming the emotional core and foundation of the entire novel, to the point where if anyone, Prairie qualifies as the book's protagonist far more than her father. Pynchon has always tried to portray women properly, and sometimes he errs, and becomes too horny for his own good. As implied, "Vineland" still includes sex, but its steadfast and humanistic grounding of these three well-developed women firmly lands it in a realm where I can consider it Pynchon's only properly feminist novel I've read thus far.

This is maybe the most formally and narratively accomplished of Pynchon's "short" novels I have read - a whiplash lightning storm of craziness and anti-establishment fervor, with far much more going for it than its detractors would have you believe. There is so much here worthy of analysis and enjoyment and I'm convinced its middling reputation is only a result of being a tough act to follow from "Gravity's Rainbow", but both novels really do feel of apiece with each other, and anyone who tells you it isn't great is tripping harder than the washed up Flower Children that inhabit this novel. What a fucking ride, maaaaaan.

"Harken unto me, read thou my lips, for verily I say that wheresoever the CIA putteth in its meathooks upon the world, there are also to be found those substances which God may have created but the U.S. Code hath decided to control. Get me? Now old Bush used to be head of CIA, so you figure it out."

Pynchon's feds and heads novel, mostly set in the bad old days of the Reagan war on drugs (which, given the AG's announcement yesterday, may return any day now). With the gloss of time on it, this book feels like a second, lesser chapter of The Crying of Lot 49, the paranoia carried to comic ends and the deep vale of history replaced by the Tube. It's chaotic, unstructured, occasionally very funny, and another riff on the author's constant themes of freedom and what pretends to be freedom in America and the wider world. Definitely on Pynchon's B list but still more entertaining than similar books about the same era by other writers.

Pynchonian zaniness + fibrous nutrition at the sentence level + fun to read + hermeneutical-political + leaving plenty of lacunae in immediate comprehension to commit intellectual effervescence, not to mention I’m of an age to not to have to look up most of the cultural references.

While Vineland seems weak among all the pynchons, it's still pynchon all the way. For once I could read Pynchon casually, i.e, without having to check PynchonWiki or dictionary. Characters are caricature-y, cartoon-y and the whole thing is very sitcom like, but with high budget, liberty and no restrictions from telecaster.

Re-read. Goddamn this is a glorious book. For all the wackiness, I'd say this is the first time Pynchon lays bare his true humanism without obfuscating it behind oblique language. It's just a big shaggy dog of a story and I can't say enough good things about it. Anyone that compares it to V., GR, M&D, or AtD is an idiot that knocks it for not going epic-scale. Take it for what it is: a sweet little book about family, and the shifting definitions that word has come to encompass.