About the Book: Vineland
Thomas Pynchons wretchedly funny dystopian thriller, sending up the end days of
Americas countercultural dream
Vineland, a zone of blessed anarchy in northern California, is the last refuge
of hippiedom, a culture devastated by the sobriety epidemic, Reaganomics, and
the Tube. Here, in an Orwellian 1984, Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter Prairie
search for Prairies long-lost mother, a Sixties radical who ran off with a narc.
Full of quasi-allegorical characters, elaborate unresolved subplots, corny
songs ("Floozy with an Uzi"), movie spoofs (Pee-wee Herman in The Robert Musil
Story), and illicit sex (including a macho variation on the infamous sportscar
scene