By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
I love the martial arts material in this book. I first heard of ninjitsu in 1973 in the Manhunter stories in Detective Comics by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson. I love the line on page 128 of Vineland, “DL reached the radical conclusion that her body belonged to herself.” Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea wrote about the question of people’s bodies belong to themselves or to the government or to their parents.
Born in 1962, I did not experience the 1960’s as an adult or even as an adolescent. I love how Pynchon writes about the Sixties. It resonates with my understanding of that period. I feel grateful that my family moved from Silver Spring, Maryland, to San Jose, California in November, 1967. I got to walk around San Francisco a lot in the next few years, watching hippies with little understanding on my part. The movie Zodiac really captures the look of the Bay Area in the late Sixties and early Seventies.
Here in 2025, I wonder about the role of marital arts and Pynchon in my life at the age of 63. I regret not learning more marital arts when I had the chance, but who knows what the future holds.
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