VIda (1979) by Marge Piercy

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

Vida (1979)

by Marge Piercy

Cape Cod, Massachusetts 

Massachussets: 27/30

   I was prepared to just really trash this book until I saw a blurb from her 1970 novel, Dance the Eagle to Sleep, by none other than Thomas Pynchon (it's pronounced pynSEAN, fyi).  His dedicated website at Pomona College lists nine blurbs, the last in 1996 (for George Saunders).   Vida was, for me, another extremely tedious entry from the 1001 Novels list, featuring the eponymous heroine who is on the run for a series of bombings against corporate targets in the late 1960's. 

   The book takes place all over the Northeast and Atlantic, with huge portions taking place in New York City and upstate Vermont.  The Cape Cod location of the title is a safe house where Vida spends a couple weeks.  Unclear to me why Vida what be slotted in for Cape Cod, seems like there would be plenty of titles that are set entirely on the Cape.  If anything, this felt like a strong New York City title. 

   Having grown up in the SF Bay Area in the 80's and 90's, I am well familiar with the subculture of 60's activists who had to go "underground" for various reasons.  A half century later, it all seems pretty silly, particularly if you compare the literature of the American left, with, I don't know, analogous writers in places like China and Vietnam, were such issues were literally a matter of life and death.   The life or death angle here was, I felt, a little forced.  

    Also worth mentioning that 18/27 books have women authors.  It seems very clear at this point that this a "My canon, my rules" situation with editor Susan Straight, and she wants us to be reading women authors.  I'm all for it, but I'd like the books to be better, or at least less domestic.  This book, at least, is not about a woman struggling with motherhood.