Word: vineland
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...VINELAND by Thomas Pynchon; Little, Brown; 385 pages...
...Rainbow (1973), the mammoth and, to many, impenetrable novel that established Thomas Pynchon as the most important and mysterious writer of his generation. While his cult exfoliated, the author mostly remained silent; Slow Learner, a collection of five previously published stories, appeared in 1984. Now, at last, comes Vineland, Pynchon's first novel in nearly 17 years, and the faithful can again begin the quest for runic meanings, preferably hidden. And right up at the top of the second page of text, something interesting glimmers: "Desmond was out on the porch, hanging around his dish, which was always empty because...
From the sound of a V-2 rocket descending on London in the earlier novel to the cries of birds pilfering dog food in Vineland: um, as a Pynchon character might say, there seems to have been a little downscaling going on around here. The perception is accurate but also, as things develop, a trifle misleading. True, this time out Pynchon has not tried to top the apocalypse of Gravity's Rainbow. He has chosen a subject that may even cause some groaning (Oh, come on, man, grow up) among reviewers and fans: the attempts of some aging hippies...
Patience at this point is advisable, because it will be rewarded. The year is 1984, although flashbacks soon come thick and fast. The setting is Vineland County, a fictional, fog-shrouded expanse of Northern California where, as one character remarks, "half the interior hasn't even been surveyed...
...novel is only marginally about dopers and spoilsport law-enforcement types. The showdown looming in Vineland County serves as the melody for a series of dazzling riffs on the 1970s and early '80s. It comes as a surprise to realize that these generations are the lost ones in Pynchon's fiction. V. (1963) and The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) anticipated but arrived just before the triumphant effulgence of television and youth culture in American life; Gravity's Rainbow was chiefly set during World War II. So Vineland amounts to Pynchon's first words on the way we have been...