The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. . . . The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. –Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (1845-46)
One of the most attractive alternatives to the media is word of mouth, and most Pynchon fans have their own grapevines to listen to. Mine says that for many of the 17 years since Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), he has been working on not one but two pieces of fiction, Vineland and another novel that has already entailed extensive research into such topics as the Russian revolution and the Mason-Dixon line. For the time being we have a book on a more modest scale than any of Pynchon’s three previous novels, slotted into a narrower time frame (although it still takes in most of this century), easier to follow, and appreciably more down-to-earth. It also shows signs of being hastier in execution and more urgent in its address–a novel pitched precisely at the present moment, as current as Bush’s invasion of Panama.
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The fact that it’s both more political and in some ways more hopeful than V. (1963) or The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) or Gravity’s Rainbow may be what’s most unexpected and most off-putting about Vineland, as it raises the question of whether the Old Hipster’s mind is getting soft. There’s no doubt that he’s gotten older; whether this means wiser or mellower or sappier or dottier won’t be the same for every reader, but it seems reasonable enough to say that all four adjectives apply in spots. If memory serves, this is the first of his novels in which Pig Bodine–a raucous naval mischief-maker who might be described as a John Belushi/John Candy type avant la lettre–doesn’t make even a cameo appearance, and his absence is complemented by some evidence of a dawning feminist awareness, an overall sense that women are the final arbiters and custodians of their own lives, minds, and bodies that is quite new to Pynchon’s work. It is also the first Pynchon novel in which families matter a lot (the book is dedicated to his parents). And, though each of his previous novels involved a quest for origins, this is the first in which the quest becomes explicitly and unambiguously sociopolitical in nature and doesn’t end in failure.
Most of the novel’s optimism rests on the historical continuity in leftist protest–from the turn of the century to the 30s to the 60s to the (implied) 90s–in spite of the intervening periods of amnesia. The continuity is mainly preserved in the novel by women, through the medium of family ties, and whether or not one perceives this linkage as sentimental or reactionary in relation to the book’s progressive agenda depends on how literally one chooses to take it. Whatever else this Ma Joad sensibility may reflect, it is certainly American to the core in its emphasis on the local over the universal. (The book’s title refers to Vinland, the name given to North America by Leif Eriksson when he sailed here from Greenland around the eleventh century AD.) And it raises the question of whether Pynchon is stacking the deck: how come only the book’s good guys have strong family bonds?
For readers who have been looking forward to another Pynchon blockbuster with the historical complexity, intellectual breadth, and stylistic range of Gravity’s Rainbow, Vineland is bound to disappoint, in spite of all the pleasure and recognition it provides. Pynchon’s last novel–set in Europe in the early 40s, when Pynchon was still in grammar school in Long Island–with its dense evocations of London in that period, is a remarkable triumph of historical imagination. Although the narrative is anachronistically overlaid by a thoroughly 60s sensibility evident in much of the style, tone, and detail, this bifocal vision permits an understanding of the past in relation to the present that’s staggering in its implications.
Another formidable area from which Pynchon seems equally distanced is his position as grist for the academic mills, of which Clifford Mead’s Thomas Pynchon: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Materials (Dalkey Archive Press), published late last year, gives ample evidence. By the same token, it offers a corresponding sense of how much Pynchon may wish to ignore his status as an ivy-covered institution–identifying, if at all, with the ivy rather than the institution and contriving to creep away from the campus and follow his own tangled progress elsewhere, into less charted territory like Vineland itself, where the ghosts of Indians and the dreams of leftists still linger along with the freaks, Thanatoids, and other forgotten relics. Apart from reprinting 13 Pynchon endorsements and 21 pages of high school juvenilia, Mead’s book catalogs, in addition to all of Pynchon’s published works in all their editions and translations, 127 theses and dissertations on him, and a whopping 84 pages of critical books, articles, and conference papers–conjuring up a nightmarish effusion of mostly unnecessary paper designed to perpetuate a bureaucratic institution rather than to foster any effective change in a culture.
