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What is it that makes rebellion a young person's game? Have you ever run into a young person railing against the world, demanding we bring down the corrupt systems that enslave us all, full of rage and righteous anger, while you, an adult, can only shake your head with a tight-lipped smile, maybe sharing a glance with other adults nearby as if to say, "young people, am I right?" Maybe you react that way out of melancholy, knowing that you, too, were once that young person, full of piss and vinegar, ready to take on the world, but now, now what? You think you know better now? That you've aged and matured past such trivialities, as if all of the world's evils can be softly explained away once you graduate from college?

The truth is we all soften, our sharp edges dull with time, we get distracted by bills and nice restaurants and children and streaming services. "I can barely keep my own life together!" we proclaim, as if the vast majority of our stressors aren't of our own creation, or maybe the creation of societal expectations that we appear to be powerless to overcome.

But what about those oppressive systems, those overwhelming evils that need to be held in check? Well that's just how the world is, isn't it? How it's always been. There's not much that can be done and there's definitely nothing I can do. I need to take care of myself and my own personal circle, you understand, and that takes all of my energy. Sure, I support all of the right causes, say all of the right things on social media (only echoes of an echo of my former anger), but life is hard enough, everything is so messed up, I have so much anxiety, don't I deserve to find whatever peace and happiness I can through whatever distractions I can find? Drugs, the Tube, the eternal scroll, whatever helps to keep that youthful optimism and anger bottled down where I can't feel it anymore.

This is Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, a timeless story never more relevant than today, even as it's specifically an exploration of the disillusionment of those young, rebellious free spirits of the 60s, eventually beaten down by fascistic Nixonian repression, the War on Drugs, a growing police state, the irresistible rise of the Tube, the beautiful people of Hollywood, and the transformation into "adulthood" with all of the children and bills and dead-end jobs that come with it. The story is told in true Pynchonian fashion, with tons of zany characters, lots of drugged-out sex and antics, and a primarily light-hearted tone that is intermittently interrupted with passages of searing gravity.

And of course, paranoia and conspiracy. There is some kind of giant machine, dark and faceless, that is seemingly breaking the spirts of these peace-loving hippies, maybe the police, maybe the government, but maybe something else larger in the shadows with a sinister masterplan, a force of nature that can't be stopped much less property identified, dulling our anger, sapping our spirits, making us soft and compliant. Are we being misled into an unnatural state of being? Or is it our natural state to be told what to do?

Vineland is often seen as Pynchon-lite (as if that is a thing that exists), but this is Pynchon at the top of his game, one of the best to ever do it, full of ideas and purpose, every sentence a marvel, every page a delight.