Vineland
- This article is about the novel. For towns of the same name, see Vineland, Minnesota and Vineland, New Jersey. For the Viking colony, see Vinland.
Vineland is a 1990 book by Thomas Pynchon. Like most of Pynchon's work, it is postmodern. The book's subject matter is hippies living in Boonville, California, a small town in California's Anderson Valley. Some say the title, Vineland is a play on the word "Hollywood." Others contend that the title refers to the first Viking civilization of Vinland in North America. Still others contend that the title refers to Vineland, New Jersey, the hometown of Patti Smith. Vineland disappointed the many critics and readers who waited almost twenty years since Gravity's Rainbow in 1973. In contrast to Pynchon's earlier works, Vineland was overtly political and polemical, as if Pynchon, disgusted with Reaganomics, penned an angry modern adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. But Pynchon's technique is still recognizable - from a cameo of Mucho Maas (from The Crying of Lot 49) to a bizarre episode hinting at Godzilla, Pynchon's "zaniness" pervades the novel. Some readers contend that Vineland, unlike what its detractors argue, does not take itself seriously enough to be leftist propaganda.
See alsoWanda Tinasky
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