Justified Anger 2: Vineland Edition
Five on Friday 5/3/2024
Happy Friday!
I’m going to keep this letter on the short side because I published a long gestating entry of Drumming Upstream earlier this week. Plus, I find the current weather too nice to waste on another long day spent on my laptop.
I’ve been thinking lately about the rumor that Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film, expected to land next summer, will be an adaptation of the novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. Vineland is my least favorite Pynchon novel, which is to say that I like it well enough. It is a natural fit for Anderson, given how well he adapted Pynchon’s Inherent Vice back in 2014. It is also a fascinating choice of subject for our current political moment, for reasons that I’d like to elaborate on for a bit.
Like Anderson’s last stab at the Pynchon canon, Vineland is one of the reclusive author’s California novels, a trio of shorter books either set in or primarily concerned with the eruption of the counterculture across the golden state in the 1960s. Only the first of the three, 1965’s The Crying of Lot 49, describes this moment in history as it was happening. Vineland on other hand was Pynchon’s first novel after a 17 year absence following the publication of his masterpiece Gravity’s Rainbow in 1973. For the first time in his body of work the 1960s were now a historical subject in the same way that WWI & WWII era Europe were for V and Gravity’s Rainbow respectively. Though set in the last days of Reagan’s America, Vineland takes frequent and lengthy (too lengthy, sometimes) trips down memory lane. The best of those detours takes the scenic route through a student protest at a fictional southern California college campus during the height of the Vietnam war. Though no official word about Anderson’s adaption has made its way to the public, I can’t help but wonder how a movie potentially focused on student protest will resonate in the aftermath of the ongoing student protests against the war on Palestine.
I’ve written about Pynchon and protest movements before, as some readers will remember. Back in 2020 when this was still a tinyletter I wrote about Gravity’s Rainbow in the context of the George Floyd BLM protests and Seattle’s CHAZ, or Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. A reoccurring theme in Gravity’s Rainbow, and Pynchon’s writing in general, are the brief pockets of disorder and possibility that rip open in the fabric of the social order. These holes in reality are all the more fascinating for the speed with which they are stitched back up. Though Pynchon identifies a number of these “subjunctive” periods throughout history, his eye is always trained on the late 20th century. The sense you get is that even when Pynchon is writing about Germany in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the Nazi’s that he’s really writing about the 1960’s counterculture. Even though he seems to admire the potential energy that these ruptures unleash, Pynchon doesn’t have the rosiest view of how that energy was spent. Gravity’s Rainbow’s “The Zone” is debaucherous, chaotic, stalked by opportunists, riddled with contradiction, and haunted by the paranoid sense that the good times are already long gone.
The Pynchon that returned with Vineland was a softer, cuddlier guy than the one that wrote Gravity’s Rainbow. He isn’t shy about the protest movement’s short-comings (the scene where the largely white student body bungles a meeting with a black nationalist group is especially cringe-worthy) but he paints them in a far more sympathetic light than the deranged inhabitants of The Zone. Pynchon’s descriptions of the euphoria and exhilaration of organized protest in Vineland are some of the most romantic passages in his catalog. Those fleeting glimpses of catharsis make Vineland worth a read, despite the interminable Yakuza and NorCal zombie subplots (it should carry extra weight that even I find the Yakuza assassination subplot unreadable, that should have been firmly in my wheelhouse).
Vineland is also the first Pynchon novel to have an unambiguously happy ending. The student movement falls apart from the combined strain of its own contradictions, messy interpersonal dynamics and disproportionate external pressure from the FBI. But even in the wake of that failure, Vineland and the rest of Pynchon’s late style novels suggest that there’s a chance for a minor but meaningful victory through the power of love, friendship and camaraderie. I imagine that when Paul Thomas Anderson’s Vineland hits theaters next summer that our current student movement will find this “the real revolution is the friends we made along the way” shtick to be woefully inadequate. The wistful melancholy of Vineland has its place in the hearts of those whose moment has passed, but for those whose moment is now this emotional moistness can only cause rust.
In retrospect, The Zone was a good choice of analogy for the 2020 protests. As a consequence of their sheer scale, those protests couldn’t help but be diffuse. The rage rightfully directed at America’s racist and oppressive police state was refracted through the lens of general dissatisfaction with the Trump administration and, if we’re being frank, lockdown induced mania. Pulled thusly in so many directions, it is no wonder that the initial radical demands were diluted down to cosmetic changes and marketing slogans. Spread so thin, the fury that ignited cop cars in Brooklyn devolved into lawn signs and electoral wins for center-right democrats in New York City and in the White House. The current protest movement feels different. The stakes are too damn high for anything less. The demands are clearer and the tactics are sharper. These kids know what they’re doing. Not only are they course-correcting for the failures of past American student movements, they’ve even picked up some tricks from the 2019 Hong Kong protests, judging by the footage I’ve seen. These students groups are right to be so prepared, because holy shit has the crackdown been brutal. Clearly these protests have struck a nerve. I hope they keep striking it.
Still, all force must eventually give way to that other old saw of Pynchon’s: entropy. Student movements in particular have a way of burning hot and fast. But just because this current formulation of resistance can’t last forever doesn’t mean that its effect won’t endure. A few months ago I wrote that from a historical perspective, even if every gun aimed at Palestine simultaneously turned to dust the moment you read this sentence, the IDF will still be guilty of genocide. There will simply be no other way to remember the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, if anyone is left to remember those months at all. By the same token I believe that even if the student movement were to dry up and disperse this very day, it will have left a crucial hairline fracture in the spines of the history books. No memory of this moment will be complete without a reckoning with the brave students that stood against the day, put their bodies on the line and wrote with their own blood that they refused to go along with the blithe acceptance of needless slaughter. That counts for something, and I hope that in 17 years the students will get the Vineland happy ending that they deserve. For now, keep pushing, keep burning, keep going and eventually we might see some daylight through that fracture.
# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #
As I said above, the latest entry of Drumming Upstream dropped earlier this week. DU#43 concerns the song “Moment of Truth” by the New York rap group Gang Starr. I decided to make this entry free for everyone, just cause it had been so long since I’d updated this series. You can read my piece below and subscribe above to access the rest of the Drumming Upstream archives:
Today is BANDCAMP FRIDAYYYYYYY. Consider visiting the Lamniformes Bandcamp page to grab some hot tunes and equally hot merch. Personally, I’d recommend my latest album The Lonely Atom, a neo-nu-metal album about the dangers of isolation and the importance of collaboration. I’m super proud of it and I think you’ll enjoy it too!
Today is also an excellent day to purchase the GUNK compilation For Palestine, which has raised over $3,000 for Anera and The Palestine Youth Movement. The comp features over 50 songs from a bunch of great NYC musicians, including a cover by yours truly of a song that is extremely relevant to the repression we’re seeing on college campuses these days.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a Spotify playlist with all of this year’s tracks here. New songs added every Monday-Friday.
“Parting” by Gunesh (Gunesh, 1980)
This is another tune I got hooked on after digging deep into the RateYourMusic charts. The neoliberal prog order (as People | Places’s Andrew Noseworthy would put it) doesn’t want you to know that the USSR had some absolutely burning prog bands back in the day. This group’s from Turkmenistan, a country I know nothing about. Gunesh’s mix of local melodies, snappy jazz inspired horn arrangements and absolutely unhinged drumming is like nothing you’ve ever heard from a prog act this side of the iron curtain. Highly recommended.
“Making The Nature Scene” by Sonic Youth (Confusion Is Sex, 1983)
Zach from Laughing Stock has been on a big Sonic Youth kick this year. He’s doing his best to win me over. I spent most of Confusion Is Sex thinking “I get why someone else would be into this, but…” until suddenly halfway through “Making The Nature Scene” I briefly got it. It wasn’t the groove or Kim Gordon’s disaffected delivery that won me over, but the droning guitar noise that starts the song and then hovers in the left channel for the whole track. It isn’t a riff, hook, or even really a “part”, but it’s central to the song regardless. Once I understood that, this band’s whole shtick started to make a lot more sense to me.
“María Lionza” by Willie Colón & Rubén Blades (Siembra, 1978)
I hereby declare that spring 2024 will be the spring of salsa. I’ve lived in New York City long enough, it’s time for me understand what the deal is with salsa. Bear with me the next few weeks as I bumble my way through the salsa canon. I think one thing that’s kept me from understanding this genre, and a lot of Latin music if I’m being real, is that instead of a single drummer holding down the groove salsa groups take a “several guys in a single trench coat” approach to the rhythm section. Instead of following the drums, I’m keeping my ears locked in on the bass, which helpfully takes the center stage in this tune’s excellent bridge section.
“Lo Tuyo Es Mental” by Celia y Johnny (Celia & Johnny, 1974)
What, did you I think I was kidding? It’s Salsa Spring, baby! I love how this song feels like it starts halfway through its chord progression, when the momentum is already hurtling toward its resolution. That feeling and the smooth voice-leading afforded by using a circle-of-fifths chord progression explain why this track never feels out of control even with so many notes flying around.
“Walk In The Shadows” by Queensrÿche (Rage For Order, 1986)
For years I’ve been happy to stick with Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime, certain that none of their records were going to live up to that collection of wall-to-wall pop metal bangers. At Joseph Schafer’s encouragement I decided to venture out into the rest of the band’s most celebrated records. I return to say that my hypothesis was correct, but that this song is real good. With Queensrÿche tasty grooves and legit hard riffs never work at cross purposes, and say what you will about Geoff Tate but that dude could sing a chorus back in the day.
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Here are five micro reviews of CDs from my high school and college collection. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.
Sehnsucht by Rammstein (1997) - Industrial Metal
The first CD I ever bought. Got this at Soundtrack in Park Slope, which no longer eixsts. I was already familiar with “Du Hast” from its popularity on file sharing sites, but the rest of the record was new to me. What makes this good is that the guitars are second to the all consuming power of the kick drum. This is a dance record that happens to have metal guitars on it, not the other way around.
Saturday Night Wrist by Deftones (2006) - Nü-Metal
The first Deftones album I bought as it came out. I was psyched based on the leak of “Beware” but I didn’t get the feeling that there was much enthusiasm around the album. At its best (i.e. on the singles) this sounds like a first crack at the stuff they’d perfect on Diamond Eyes. At its worst it is Deftones by the numbers. The singer of System of a Down shows up on one song, which is pretty cool. Lesser Deftones overall.
Iowa by Slipknot (2001) - Nü-Metal
I don’t how Slipknot fans view this one now, but when I was getting into them this album had the reputation of being their heaviest. I remember listening to it a lot during a particularly snowy winter in NYC. “Here we go again, motherfucker” is the greatest/silliest lyric to open your sophomore album with. Thing album is a blast but after “Left Behind” it starts to repeat itself a bit. 40 minute Iowa would be the best Slipknot record.
St. Anger by Metallica (2003) - Outsider Art
I tried. I really, really tried. I was so into Metallica when this came out that I did my best to convince myself and anyone would listen that this was actually good. But I failed. It is terrible. St. Anger is the most expensive collection of first drafts and demos ever released for public consumption. If you struggle hard enough you could see real songs emerging from these tracks after significant editing and rearranging [Editor’s Note: YouTube is soggy with videos trying to fix this record this way, to mixed but interesting results]. The production and vocal performance however are beyond all saving. It sucks to watch them do this to themselves.
Somewhere Along the Highway by Cult of Luna (2006) - Post-Metal
I listened to this a lot while visiting colleges in my senior year of high school, so I associate it with driving across New Mexico, riding the L for the first time in Chicago, and freezing my ass off in the twin cities. An all time favorite, Cult of luna sound like a giant machine instead of individual musicians. Sparse, patient, stoic, determined. A post metal classic. This is also the first Cult of Luna record where they figured out how to write softer songs, the doom country track is particularly inspired.