Levity's RainbowBY EDWARD MENDELSON

Vinelandby Thomas Pynchon(Little, Brawn, 385 pp., $19.95)

T o find another novel thai isas tedious, as tendentious,and as exhilarating asThomas Pynchon's J'ine-

land you have to search far back throughliterary history, perhaps as far as War andPeace. 'I'he teclious part of Vineland is itsplot, in which radicals and potheads ofihe 196()s replay in the 1980s their Mani-chaean struggles against authority. Thetendentiouspart of thebookisits hislori-cal myth, which explains the repressive1970s and 1980s as a fulfillment of thesecret wishes of the radical 1960s. Fheexhilarating part is its vision. Vinelandsees American life of the last two decadesin terms of a laconic American Indianlegend of a period when no one dies, alegend that the book transforms into avision of an era when the processes of lifeand death are suspended, when timestands still. The vision culminates in themoment whcu that era ends, death re-sumes, and life triumphs.

To reach the vision, though, you mustwork your way through the plot. In itselfthe plot is an unsalvageable tangle of im-probabilities, but Pynchon almost res-cues it through the intellectual andimaginative energy that he brings ro the

landscape, the culture, and the languagetbal are the setting of each improbableincident. l'i?ieland's plot is often botbprogrammatic and perfunctory, but itsworld is richer and more various than theworld of almosi any American novel inrecent memory.

As in mosl visionary tales, ihc siorybegins in a comfortably familiar setting.A few chapters later, when the visionkicks in, this selling, like every ordinary-looking place in Pynchon's universe,proves to be a crossing point on the bor-der between ihe everyday world and therealm of the mysterious and the miracu-lous. The book opens on the morningwhen Zoyd Wheeler is scheduled to per-form the annual act of public crazinessthat assures the continued arrival of hismental-disability checks. Il is 1984.Wheeler, ihc latest of Pynchon's passiveand bewildered representatives, is an ex-rock musician around forty who lives ahand-to-mouth existence m the Califor-nia redwood country with his teenagedaughter. Except for his well-plannedannual leap ilirough the window of afriend's bar, nothing in his thoughts oractions qualifies him for mental disabilitypayments. The worst that can be said of

Nf:w Ri.i'LUi,[c. JULY 9 a 16,1990

him is that lie sct-ms .slow lo retogni/ethat ihe I9(>(»s arc really over. Bul theopening morning ol ihe novel bringshim "sevt-ral ludt- upfl.iics." Ihc log-gers' bars bave l>ccn rcino<lclcd and gen-trified. The local l\ station lias taken itnpon Itself to choose on Wheeler's be-hall tbe site ol'his public liiniicy. And thedrug enf<»rcerneni agent who made hislife miserable in ihe pot-snuikiiif; 19(iOsreappeiiis with news ol \N'liceIer's ex-wife, last seen ii dozen years before.

Iliesc earlv chapters ;ue vintage Pyn-chon, wilh all ihc comic extravagancethat makes his hooks so iiiKonifoi tableIO lead while dicssed in a stiilled shin.Here again aic ihc silly iiiimes. ihe dia-logue marked by iitigr;iinni;uical com-mas lo indicaie |>;niscs and breathingpalterns. the ex.id car ibr clevalcd anddemotic spcedi. I lere also are do/ens ofinterpolated Ivrits, some tos.scd oil byotherwise unmusical thiiracters in thecourse of the action, others traded byartistic sensibilities wlu) sh;nc I'vnchon'sown indecorous high spirits. One suchlyric is the advertising jingle (or a lawn-and-tree service called 'Ilie Marquis deSod. It is sun^ to the tnne of the"Marseillaise":

A laun s;i\;uit, WIID\obad> (K-ais Mar-Q\»s de Sodt

Inp a

Als()prc.seni.asahva\s iti Pvnchon, is abreaiiiiakinHh sustained dcmo( ralic lyri-cism. No other American writer moves sosmootlily and .swilily beiwccn ihf ex-tremes of lu(fh and low slyle, or accom-modates so generously the shrill patoisof the valley girl and ihc roluudilics ofEmerson. Pynchon even hrealhes liieinto that exhausled sel piece, ihe poetryof ihe road, /oyd Wheeler watches apunk hand's van disappear wilh hisdaughter up <i "ihin. cloudpressed lane."Later, a car sweeps throtigh Los Angeles

among Olympic vi.iit<ir!i fn>ni cvcr)T*hcri'who ift-nicH ill! ovi-r the frt-fwav ymidda> dcnsiiit-s till lar into iheshincd-u|). scrtMmii]^ l>huk ntotorcadcsthai Luuld hiive i;irrk-cl ativ <il ffveral of-fice sei-ki-rs, cniist-r-i ht-iidin^ tor irct-d amimore Kciilly nMriiiK l>iiulr\arcls. hu^i-doubU- and iriplc- imiU-i lii^s iluii loved mHnd S'olkswa^ens laluniii^ u|> Ki'-idcs andgo sii-shayiii)^ :iniiiiul (liciii Ki;i(t-(ullv ;iiulat giial'K-as.s colciiiiucs. plus liiiR-rs, ili--scrii'is. wimps ;IM(I [)ini])s. s|n'e<iiiin likel)t]lk'is. firintuii).; liki- iliimps. jhovt- ili<-head.f t>l' IV wiiltlicrs, lovers under llicoverpasses, movies at niiilU Iciiirin uui.bright gaN-staiion oases in \n\rv flunrcs-cent Kpill, caiiopicd ix'iuMdi ilu- p.iliiitrees, so<ni wnippfd, down IIH- torridoisof the KUrlace sirccls. in nixliirnal smog,the adobe air, tin- smell <>l distant fire-works, the Kpiik-d, tin- broken world.

Even at its most Krical, the style oft'ttwland is less liashv ihan the stvle of

JULY 9 a IS. 1990 (11)- Ntw KM-l iil ii 41

Cravily'i Uaiubow. a book in which Pyn-chon treated lhe illu.sion of switchingfrom Kiiglish to Fienth to (Jcnnan inthe course ol a few pages written entire-ly in Knglish. But Vini'hnd's style is moredensely integrated with its emotionsand less hesitant to speak in the voiceso(" feeling. What is new in the styleand the .stoiy of J'inekuid is a deliber-ately gawky tenderness for the ordinary.Pynthon writes with quiet afVectionabout a modern backwoods Americawhere building supplies are exchangedat swap meets and tow-truck drivers re-call lessons from grouptlicrapy.

A similar afiection in-forms Pynchon's accountof Zoyd Wheeler's lovefor his daughter, whosename, Frairie, is a dis-cordant 1960.S artifactamong the shoppingmalls of the 1980s. (Prai-rie's punk-geared boy-friend, named Isaiah'IWo-Four by his '60sparents alter the biblicalverse about swords andploughshares, has de-vised a characteristically1980s scheme for "vio-lence centers" modeledon thenie-bascd amuse-ment parks.) The noveltreats the relation be-tween father and daugh-ter partly as a detente be-tween the language oftwo generations, and thecomplex harmonies ofstyle established here ex-tend back through twomore generations beforethe novel ends.

When lAnchon ic-printcd his early storiesin Sltm' Learner (1984). bewrote an introductionthat all but explicitly re-nounced his first threenovels, r. (1963). TheCrying of Lot -19 (196G),and Gravity .( Rainbow (1973), and oltcreda prospectus for his next one. He re-called that his younger self had "tome upwith the notion that one's personal lift-had nothing to do with fit tion. when thetriitb, as everyone knows, is nearly tbedirect opposite." His early work had ig-nored what he already knew, that the lic-tion "that moved and pleased me then asnow was precisely that whith had beenmade luminous, undeniably authentic byhaving been found and taken up, alwaysat a ct)st, from deeper and more sbaredlevels oi the life we all really live."

I'hc main plot of i'nietand is builtart)tmd a diagrammatic stoi'y of personal

and political obsession that has little todo with lives that anyone has ever lived.But the relations between parents an<lchildren in the book, rclation.s often tan-gential to the main plot, intermittentlymake /'i7if/rt/;/^/'ituninous, undeniably au-thentic," and give it a warmth that theintellectual exoticism of his earlier workexcluded.

Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter Prairieturn out to be little more than observersof the main plot, which unfolds as Prairieseeks the secrets of her mother's past.The stor\ ccnttTs on the mutual sexual

I I » ) . M . \ . S i ' l N t : l ! ( > . N u s V I N I 1 O K J I M N I W k l r i H I l c :

obsession between Frcncsi Gates, once aradical lilmniaker at Berkeley, laterWheeler's wife and Prairie's mother, andBrock Vond, an anti-radical federal pros-ecutor who got his start in Nixon's Jtis-tite Dcpai tnicnt.

Pyiuhoii pcrfoiins much huicy loot-work [o avoid falling into the holes ol thisplot, but he never bothers to fill thf holesbecause he has little interest in BrockVond or Krenesi Gates as people. Vondis for Pynclion a local embodiment ofimpersonal and collective power, delud-ed by the belief that his acts are the- prod-uct of his own choice rather than of larg-er historical energies. Frencsi, more

subtly, is an embodiment of the imper-sonal collective wishes of mnch of hergeneration. Tbe actions of both servemostly to dramatize a single historicalanci political idea, the idea that the con-llitt in ibe 1960s between the radicalsand the authorities concealed theirshameful longings for each other.

Everything that happens in the story ofFrcncsi Gates and Brock Vond is de-signed to confirm Vond's intuition thatthe rebellions of that era were "notthreats to order but unacknowledged de-sirtvs (or it." that the revolution of youth

against "patents ofall kinds" expressed a"nt'ccl only to stay chil-dren forever, safe insitlesome extended nationalFamily." Frenesi needslittle persuasion fromVond to become first hislover, then his means ofspreading distrust andviolence among the lead-ers of a campus rebel-lion, and tinaliy. underthe federal witness-protection program, anagent in sting opera-tions. Fhrough all this,Pynchon is less con-cerned with her motivesor leclings than he is intreating her as an allego-ry of the willing transfor-mation of the rebellioussell-righteotis 1960s intothe sullen acqtiisitive de-cades that followed.

J'iiu'laiid's account ofthe past quarter centurydepends on the imagina-tive force of its historicalmyth, not t>n the analyticpower of historical argu-ment. Whether or not areader believes the mythis probably irrelevant.Whai matters is whetheror nol the myth has suffi-cient resonance to makea reader willing to sus-

pend disbelief for the duration of thenovel. Pynchon's mythmaking sncteeds,but only after the plot repeatedly bringsit close to disaster.

Mythical history, as Pynchon practicesit. is not a record of power and domina-tion, it is a record of longings and fulfill-ments that occur on a vast archetypalscale. Figures like Frenesi Gates andBrock Vond tan personify tbose long-ings, but they merely act out a strugglemuch larger tban anything they can un-derstand. In I'lneland. the whole cultureof the f970s and 1980s is the fruit ofdesires felt in the 1960s for an eternitywithout change—for a permanent his-

42 I'ni'; NKW RKPLULJC JULY 9 a 16,1990

torical love-death like the endless unionsought by Tristan and Isolde. Rebelliousyouth yearned for the conviction thatthey "were never going to die" (a ubiqui-tous refrain among the young in thisbook). Authoritarian age yearned for un-changing certainties that would calmtheir fears of death. To escape from timeand change, the young cried for a paren-tal discipline that would preserve them ineternal youth, and the old were gratefulto oblige. The result, in Pynchon's myth,was a brief historical interregnum out-side both the sufferings and satisfactionsof human time. At the end of Vineland thisera ends, not with an apocalyptic up-heaval, which would mark the end oftime, but in a refusal of apocalypse, whenhuman time renews itself, and death andlife regain their dominion.

Historical mythmaking is arisky enterprise for a nov-elist, especially when themyth refuses to point a re-

assuring and accusatory finger at politi-cal groups that the novelist's audiencedislikes. Even more risky is the way Pyn-chon's overtly feminist novel covertlyadopts mythical archetypes: tbe youngrebels are portrayed as archetypally fem-inine, the authority that they yearn for asarchetypally masculine. But the histori-cal myth of Vineland is cautiously dis-guised by the tone of the book, a glow-ingly nostalgic tone that suggests thatthe spontaneities of the 1960s were un-ambiguously admirable. The disguise isso effective that the whole myth seems tohave eluded many readers who wouldcertainly have censured it if they had no-ticed it.

The contrast between the achinglynostalgic tone of the story and the harshjudgment of its content is Vineland'?, mostcalculatedly unsettling quality. The ef-fect is designed to educate the readeraway from the nostalgia that the bookitself evokes. Vineland adopts the nostal-gic wish of its early chapters precisely inorder to expose the delusion and fantasyof those wishes later. As Frenesi Gates'sstory gradually emerges, U becomesclear that Vineland is nostalgic only abontthe events and situations of the 1960s,and that it maintains its nostalgia only aslong as it neglects to look at the person-alities that figured in those events. The1960s wedding of Zoyd Wheeler andFrenesi Gates, recalled through Zoyd'smemories early in the book, is an imageof the peaceable kingdom. Pynchonwaits a few chapters before pointing out,almost parenthetically, that the bridemarried the groom mostly because heknew nothing aboul her and her past,that she was on the run irom multipleacts of scxnal and political betrayal andfrom her direct moral responsibility for

the murder of one of her lovers.Pynchon portrays Frenesi Gates with

the same unsettling contrast of tone andsubstance that he applies to the 1960sethos that she represents. Virtually ev-eryone in the book spends most of histime passively adoring her or activelyseeking her. Her ex-husband ZoydWheeler tries to visit her in his dreams.Her ex-lover Brock Vond leads a privatearmy in search of her when her file disap-pears from a federal computer. Someoneelse wants to make her the center of afilm about the whole adventure of the1960s. A reader can scarcely avoid get-ting caught up in the universal mood ofadmiration, a mood that persists long af-ter it becomes clear that Frenesi's onlyredeeming virtues are a pair of legs thatlook arresting in a miniskirt, her "notori-ous bine eyes," and her ability to affect"the wide invincible gaze practiced bymany sixties children, meaning nearlyanything at all, useful in a lot of situa-tions, including ignorance." Summa-rized in a review, this contrast betweentone and substance seems stark and obvi-ous. In Vineland \X.se\i, the process of mor-al discovery that Pynchon generatesfrom this contrast seems as subtle andnuanced as the patient moral revelationsin the late novels of Henry James.

Unlike James, Pynchonbrings his most nuancedmoral arguments to bearat precisely the points

where his narrative seems most garishand Linsubtle. The more the melodra-matic language of ]'ineland casts BrockVond as a sadistic villain, the more thelogic of the action casts him as a partnerin a dance of mutual courtship. Somereaders, taking the tone for the sub-stance, have complained that Brock andthe other Justice Department heaviesin Vineland seem disappointingly tamewhen compared with the real heavieswho occupied the department underNixon and Reagan. But like all literaturethat tries to make a moral argument,Vineland sees little point in placing blameon those who are unlikely ever to read it.It tries to discomfort its readers, first byagreeing with tbeir self-satisfied sensethat their unhappiness is the result ofotbers' actions, then by quietly demon-strating that the actions that most afflictthem are their own. The 1960s radicals(and the peaceful apolitical potsmokerswhom Pynchon treats with sentimentalaffection) do not even have the satisfac-tion of defeating Brock Vond, who is de-feated by his own side. Ronald Reagan.like a half-conscious deus ex machina,wakes from a dream and, by cuttingVond's budget, interrupts him m mid-villainy.

J'meland's moral argument makes it a

far more coherent book than the jum-bled catalog of effects suggested by thereviews. But it is not nearly as coherentas Pynchon's earlier novels. One subplotreads as if it scarcely belongs to the restof tbe book and probably dates back to amuch earlier point of Pynchon's career.Shortly after Gravity 's Rainboiv appearedin 1973, reports circulated that Pynchonplanned to complete two novels, re-ferred to in his contract as "The Mason-Dixon Line" and "The Japanese Insur-ance Adjuster." Vineland is neither ofthese books, but the Japanese insuranceadjuster—his name is Takeshi Fumi-mota—strayed into it anyway. He seemsa bit lost. Some of his episodes, notablyone in which he investigates a Japaneseelectronics plant apparently leveled bythe foot of a gigantic reptile, are writtenin a science-fiction style that resemblesparts of Gravity's Rainbow and nothingelse in Vineland. The episodes in which heappears are given over to technologicalfantasies of the kind that the restof the book disdains, and are void ofmoral or emotional intelligence. I won'tbother you with details of the Ninjetteretreat in California where Takeshi Fu-mimota recovers from the Ninja DeathTouch inflicted on him in a Tokyo broth-el by his American partner, a femalemartial arts specialist named DL Chas-tain, when she mistakes him for BrockVond.

In its final pages Vinelandbreaks free from its miscella-neous plots and liberates itsvision. Throughout the book

Pynchon has glanced toward "anotherorder of things," the same visionaryrealm that in The Crying of Lot 49 he called"another mode of meaning behind theobvious." At the end of the book thismanifests itself in a splendor both comicand profound.

Pynchon's vision is sacramental butnot otherworldly. Instead of lookingaway from this world to one somewhereelse, he looks for the hidden order andsignificance of the world he lives in. J'ine-land'n sacramental geography is a visionof a sacred place, the fictional VinelandCounty in northern California, the placethat Zoyd Wheeler comes to recognize asa harbor of refuge, "Vineland tbeGood." This visionary Vineland occu-pies the real geography of the Californiatoast from Crescent City to Eureka andthe redwood forests nearby. But itsname bints that it is an epiphany ofthat thousand-year-old alternate Ameri-ca founded by Norse sailors, who, unlikethe sailors who founded the America welive in, never conquered the land orusurped its indigenous people.

The people indigenous to the real ge-ography of Vineland are the Yurok, a

44 I'm. Nt:\v Ri.i'i.iiii-i{] JULY 9 & 16,1990

tribe that figures in classic anthropologi-cal studies, including a psychoanalyticaccount by Erik Erikson. Pynchon pausesin the middle of the novel to rememberthe Yurok and to look through their eyestoward the visionary past—the time ofthe u-oge. the creattires who, in Yurok leg-end, walked the earth before the arrivalof humanity. In a ravishing passage a fewpages from the end of the novel, Pyn-chon retells a ^urok legend that readslike a visionary distillation of the wholebook. Brock \ond , after a desperatefailed attempt to seize P'rcncsi Gates'sdaughter, is being driven away by thetow-truck drivers Vato and Blot)d fromhis stalled car (which, to his pn/zlenieni,had been a helicopter a few momentsbefore). Vato and Blood are the only twocharacters in the book who rememberthe Yurok bt-ritagc:

.\s he drove. Vato tolcJ an old Yurok storyabout a man from Turip, about five milesup the Klamath from {hv sea. who lost theyoung woman he loved and pursued herinto the countn' of death. When he foundthe boat ofllla'a. the one who ferried thedead across ilie last river, hi- puHed il outof the water and smashed oui ihe bouomwith a stone. .And lor ten years no one inthe world died, because there was no boatIO take them across.

"Did be get ber back?" Brork wanted toknow. No, uh-ub. Bul be returned 10 hisliFe in Turip, wbt-re everyone thou^bl he'ddied. . . . He was always lateful 10 warnagainst the (fhosl.s' Ihii] leading l>> i'sor-rek. the land of deal li. 1 raveled hy so manythat il was iilrc'ady i luvsi-dccp. Ontf downin the earlh, llierc wmild be no way toreturn. As bcsiarcd tml [lie window. Brockrealized ibai around [bctn all ihis time hadbeen rising a wall ii( earth on each side olthe narrowing road. . . . And soon, ahead,came tbe sound ol tbe river, ecboing.barsb, ceaseless, and beyond il llie drum-ming, ibe voltes, not cbaniing togetherbut remembering, speculating, arguing,telling tales, uttering curses, singingsongs, all thf tbings voices do. hut witfioutever allowing tbe briefest breatb of si-lence. M\ tbese voices, forever.

Allhough I'mrland satirizestelevision so obsessivelythat st)me reviewers con-cluded that Pynchon no

longer notices anything deeper than"Gilligan's Island," in fact the dust ofthe library rests on thi.s as on all hisbooks. Often it is in so fine a formas to defy casual notice. Pynthon foundthe story of the man from Itirip inA. L. Kroeber's massive collection YurokMyths (1976), where it appears as a rawunpromising fragment l<)ld by an un-skilled informant. /'mWiVrtc/transforms itpartly into thf story of Brock Vt>nd'sfailed pursuit of Frencsi Gates, partlyinto his historical myth of an era whenAmerica sought to live ".safe in some

16. 199O Tilt. KKPI 4S

time-free zone." exempt from deathand excluded from life, ihe .song oftriumph that sounds throue^h the proseof llie final chapters of the hook cele-brates the end of that era and prophe-sies a return to the pains and joys ofhtinian time.

Fynchon gives a local hahitation to (he"time-free zone" by creating a skittishlycomic group of persons called lhana-toids. who exist in a state between lifeand death. They are not as embarrassingas their name makes them sotind. Pyn-chon writes aboul them wilh a deadpanGilbert-and-Stillivan logic that acceptsthe impossible premise of their existenceand proceeds to draw the inevilable con-sequences. His Thanatoids are notghosts or ghouls, but ordinary men andwomen who happen to encotmter con-siderable trouble with banks and creditbureaus because their heirs have a legalclaim on iheir property. A large poptila-tion of them lives in a place called ShadeCreek, where (hey watch television andeat laity foods because ihey can'( think ofany reason not to. In the Yurok s(ory, noone died for ten years. Near (he end ofVinelnnd, the Thanatoids hold their tenthannual reunion.

Around the time of that reunion, inone ol"Pynchon's characteristic pas.sagesthat take matters seriously hy treatingthem as extravagant fantasy, (he Thana-toids experience an exceptiotial night.For [he firs( lime, instead of staying upwilh the Ttibe, (hey sleep. And in themorning they all simuhaneottsly wake toa promise of renewed life. They wake to

a piping, chiming music, synchronized,coming out of wristwalches, timers, andpersonal computers, engraved long ago,as if for this moment, on sound cbipsdumped once in an obscure skirinisb of tbesilicon market wars, expedited in faci byTakeshi Funiimota, as pan of ii settlemeniwitb lhe evei-questiotiablc tracing compa-ny ofTokkala & Fuji, all playing iDgethernow, and in lour-part barmfiny, the open-ing of Bacli's "Watbct Aul."

To this music, "able to make the bluestThanatoid believe, however briefly, inresurrection, they woke, lhe 1 hanatoidswoke."

I n these final chapters all thebook's generations of the liv-ing gather for another re-union, one that joins (he

families of Frenesi Gates's grandpar-ents. The older members of these twofamilies are Wobblies and Hollywoodleft-wingers, bearers of a heritage of analternate and unoflicial America. Pyn-chon (reats this alternate tradition as amalriarchal one: the novel traces theancestry of all its women characterswhile treating the men as if they sptangdirectly from the earth. Frenesi's ha-

tred for her new horn daughter, andvoluntary separation from her soon a(-tenvaid, violates (ha( matriarchal line,just as her murderous entanglemeiKwith Brock Vond is a sign of wha( thebook's historical myth tegards as thebetrayal of lhe true alternate Americaby the 1960s left.

After so thorough a hetrayal no returnor recovery can ever be complete. ZoydWheeler at last meets Frenesi Gatesagain—she is remarried with a secondchild—bn( her reappearance is a deliber-ate anticlimax. The book has other fu-tures to pursue (lian theirs. The fnialsentetice. which focuses on iheir datigh-ter Prait ie, traces a comic variety of ma-triarchal lineage, this one extendingfrom the granclmother of Prairie'.s dogdown (o the dog itself, who has abruptlyreturned to (he scene after his fligh( fromBrock \nnd's minions. The sen(encelooks like a cloyingh' sentimental cele-bration of continuity, home, and love,until you notice (hat one of its suhordi-nate clauses makes clear (hat its vision ofrenewal iticltides sudden violent death.Et in arcadia ego, says lhe ancietit tomb-stone—death also is in Arcadia. Anddeath makes possible the renewal of lilein arcadian Mneland. The fugal intt'r-weaving of life and death in (hese finalpages approaches lhe richness of Shake-spearean comedy.

All oi Pynchon's books are permeatedby otietn two central ideas: en(ropy in V..(he manifestation of the sacred in TheCrying of Lot 49, and the btueaucraliza-(ion of charisma, as described by MaxWeber, in Gravity's Rainbow. In I'inelandthe central idea is less abstract than in theearlier books. A fall into an era \vi(houilife or deadi, followed by a return to hu-man (ime. is less a concep( than a parable

of personal experience. Il describes invisionary- terms a phase that tan occur inanyone's life when all significant rela-tions and events seem balflingly distantand inaccessible.

Wbat makes this vision luminous (touse Pynchon's word of praise) in Vinelandis not the tendentious historical mythLhat attaches (o il, but its intensely per-sonal quality. Zoyd Wheeler's years ofseparation from his wife are his years in arealm without time, when he dreams ofan impossible return. Bu( be comes lorecognize tbose .same years as (he ones inwhich he learned to vahie his daughterand their shared harbor in Vineland.This pan of (be narrative, lightlysketched in the margins of lhe brightlycolored central ploi, reads like an allego-ry of a lived experience of loss andrenewal.

For all its silliness and longueurs. Vine-land is the most troubling and exuberantwork of American fic(ion to appear inmany years. It is also lhe most personalwork of an author who relied in the paston an almost anonymous impersonality.Pynchon slill refuses lo make his person-ality into a commodity available for pack-aging and distribution by a publicity ma-chine, and still prefers his readers toattend lo his books rather than to hhn-self. Yet Vinetand says more aboul its au-tbor than anyone C()uld hope to learnfrom (he photograph (ha( is omitted,with honorable reticence, frotn tbe dustjacket.

EnwARD MENUKISON is professor of En-glish and comparative literature at Co-lumbia University. His edition of theplays of W. H. Auden and ChristopherIsherwood was published last year byPrinceton Universiiv Press.

46 iHi. Ni:w Ri.PL tti.ic JULY 9 & 16,1990