Vineland is a 1990 novel by Thomas Pynchon, a postmodern tale of cultural tumult, social upheaval, rock music and drug use. Its central locale is Vineland, California, a fictional small town in California's Anderson Valley (perhaps based upon Boonville). The title Vineland may be a play on the word "Hollywood", or a reference to the first Viking settlement in North America, Vinland. Still others contend that the title refers to Vineland, New Jersey, the hometown of Patti Smith. However, the most obvious explanation is that the title is a reference to the area in which the novel is set, which is near California's grapevine-filled Napa Valley wine country. Image File history File links Vineland book cover This image is a book cover. ... Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. ... In political geography and international politics a country is a geographical entity, a territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... The barcode of an ISBN . ... Slow Learner is the 1984 published collection of six early short stories by the American novelist Thomas Pynchon. ... Mason & Dixon book cover Mason & Dixon, a post-modern novel by Thomas Pynchon first published in 1997, centers on the collaboration of the historical Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in their astronomical and surveying exploits in Cape Colony, Saint Helena, Great Britain and along the Mason-Dixon line in British... Vineland may refer to: Vineland, a novel by Thomas Pynchon // Vineland, Ontario Vineland Estates Winery Vineland, Florida Vineland, Minnesota Vineland Township, Minnesota Vineland, New Jersey Clarkston Heights-Vineland, Washington Vineland Drive-In, an operating drive-in theater in Los Angeles and Orange County Vineland Elementary School, a primary school in... MCMXC redirects here; for the Enigma album, see MCMXC a. ... Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. ... Postmodernity (also called post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is a term used by philosophers, social scientists, art critics and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary art, culture, economics and social conditions that are the result of the unique features of late 20th century and early 21st century... Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ... Anderson Valley is a sparsely populated region in western Mendocino County in northern California. ... Boonville is an unincorporated town in Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, California. ... ... Vinland was the name given to a part of North America by the Icelandic norseman Leif Eiríksson, about the year (AD) 1000. ... Vineland highlighted in Cumberland County. ... Patricia Lee (Patti) Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American musician, singer, and poet. ... Napa County is in north-central California Napa Valley is most famous for its wine. ...

Vineland disappointed many critics and readers who waited almost twenty years since Gravity's Rainbow in 1973. In contrast to Pynchon's earlier works, Vineland was seen as overtly political and polemical, as if Pynchon, disgusted with Reaganomics, penned an angry modern adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. On the other hand, one reviewer argues, Gravitys Rainbow is an epic postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28, 1973. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... Reaganomics (a portmanteau of Reagan and economics, coined by radio broadcaster Paul Harvey) is a term that has been used to both describe and decry free market advocacy economic policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989 and economic policies perceived as similar. ... This article is about the Orwell novel. ...

...such appraisals are the result of these readers' failure to apprehend the historical depth the novel offers, and their refusal to take seriously the endpoint of the history it relates. There has yet to be a critic who, like the ghost of Walter Rathenau in Gravity's Rainbow, is able to "see the whole shape at once," the continuing pattern of executive aggrandizement so carefully interwoven into the exposition of Vineland and which leads up to a moment as apocalyptic as any in recent fiction. To answer Leithauser, Wilde, and Mackey, there is in Vineland something "overarchingly malignant," "some glamorously threatening force," an "awesome glimpse of the sublime and the demonic"; it has simply gone unrecognized. ^[1]

Others note, however, that the novel is as relentless in its satire of representatives of the counterculture and oppositional movements as it is of government authority and agents. Walter Rathenau Walther Rathenau (September 29, 1867–June 24, 1922) was a German industrialist and politician who served as Foreign Minister of Germany. ... 1867 edition of the satirical magazine Punch, a British satirical magazine, ground-breaking on popular literature satire. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Politics aside, 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 does not take itself seriously enough to be leftist literature. For example, Pynchon laces the book with Star Trek references: he has his characters watch a sitcom named Say, Jim, about a starship all of whose officers "were black except for the Communications Officer, a freckled white redhead named Lieutenant O'Hara." Several characters are Thanatoids, victims of karmic imbalance and inhabitants of a strange state of being "like death, only different". In addition, the novel is replete with female ninjas, astrologers, marijuana smokers, television addicts, musical interludes (including the theme song of The Smurfs) and, naturally, metaphors drawn from Star Trek. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) is a novel by the author Thomas Pynchon. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... In politics, left-wing, political left, leftism, or simply the left, are terms which refer (with no particular precision) to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism (especially in the American sense of the word), or with opposition... The current Star Trek franchise logo Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment series. ... A sitcom or situation comedy is a genre of comedy performance originally devised for radio but today typically found on television. ... Karma (Sanskrit , act, action, performance[1]; Pāli kamma) ( ) is the concept of action or deed in Dharmic religions understood as denoting the entire cycle of cause and effect described in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist philosophies. ... Ayame, a kunoichi from the Tenchu video game series. ... An astrological chart (or horoscope) _ Y2K Chart — This particular chart is calculated for January 1, 2000 at 12:01:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time in New York City, New York, USA. (Longitude: 074W0023 - Latitude: 40N4251) Astrology (from Greek: αστρολ&#959... A Cannabis sativa plant The drug cannabis, also called marijuana, is produced from parts of the cannabis plant, primarily the cured flowers and gathered trichomes of the female plant. ... The Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs in original) are a fictional group of small sky blue creatures who live somewhere in the forests of medieval Europe. ... Look up metaphor in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

References and links

• ^  Pynchon, Thomas R. Vineland. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990).
• ^  Rushdie, Salman. "Still Crazy After All Those Years", The New York Times 14 January 1990.
• ^  Geddes, Dan. "Pynchon's Vineland: The War On Drugs and the Coming American Police-State", The Satirist
• ^  Gordon, Andrew. "Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir". The Vineland Papers: Critical Takes on Pynchon's Novel, ed. Geoffrey Green, Donald J. Greiner, and Larry McCaffery (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1994): 167-78.
• ^  Thoreen, David. “The President's Emergency War Powers And The Erosion Of Civil Liberties In Pynchon's Vineland”, Oklahoma City University Law Review 24, No. 3 (1999).
• ^  John Diebold and Michael Goodwin: Babies of Wackiness, a "reader's guide to Vineland"