Reader's Guide to Vineland

p. 204 "the brand-new field of Computer Science"   Those zeros and ones again... 

p. 205 "dissent from official reality...the same dread disease..."   Definitely. Still. 

p. 205 "Dewey Weber"  David Earl "Dewey" Weber, a   legendary Sixties surfer and surfboard builder, 

known for his trademark red trunks, his peerless style, and his capacity for alcohol.  At one point in the mid-

Sixties Weber was the largest surfboard manufacturer in the world.  

p. 205 "California mopery statutes"    Mopery = an obsolete term for loitering. Clearly an appropriate 

crime for California, where slow driving is close to a capital offense. Pynchon manages to work mopery into 

virtually every book he's ever written.  

p. 206 "potent Vietnamese buds"    What a shock, to find that you can't fight a war overseas without some 

feedback back home! 

p. 206 "long crowdwaves, carrying smaller bursts of violence that exploded like seeds in a surfer's 

cigarette"    That's a marijuana cigarette. Also a comically mixed-metaphor that combines mathematical/signal 

analysis and doper imagery. 

p. 206 "a domain bounded by a set of points partway to the next person of height equal to or greater 

than..."    An extended conceit in mock geometric clothing. Like the example on p. 117, this is probably self-

satire, as indicated once again by the concluding em-dash as Pynchon restrains himself. Ostensibly 

mathematician Weed is thinking this thought, but it's clearly Pynchon stepping in front of the curtain for a 

second. 

p. 207 "...a throb of fear went right up his asshole..."   Another visceral fear reaction. See also pages 10, 

45, 116, 299. 

p. 207 "I'm just tall, that's all."    Borrowed from Jimmy Reed's blues, "Big Boss Man." 

p. 207 "Greg Noll Lab"     Greg Noll, "Da Bull," is another legendary surfer, same vintage and hangouts as 

Dewey Weber.  See page 205. 

p. 207 "Las Nalgas Beach" = Spanish for "the buttocks," or "the spankings." More badasses. 

p. 207 "Rex Snuvvle"    Another cool name.  

p. 207 "lost tribe with failed cause"    Thanatoids? Hippies? Herreros and/or Gauchos in Gravity's 

Rainbow? It would be easy to come up with lots of other examples. 

p. 208 "geist that could've been polter along with zeit"   Clever wordplay on poltergeist and zeitgeist, but 

essentially meaningless -- much like the chipmunks on page 180. 

p. 208 "not much by Berkeley or Columbia standards"   These were the days of the Free Speech 

Movement, the Days of Rage, etc. 

p. 208 "Rex did manage to place Weed in what looked like the emerging junta"   Notice how Rex is 

doing the maneuvering. It would seem as if he worked for Vond even before Frenesi. 

p. 209 "A sudden lust for information"    Not often seen in SoCal, but it serves to reveal the usual sleazy 

land deals. 

p. 209 "a 16mm Arri 'M' on a Tyler Mini-Mount"   Arri = Arriflex, a good, light, 16mm camera. Tyler 

Mini-Mount = a small, shock-absorbing camera mount, spring-loaded and counterweighted to soak up the low-

frequency vibration of rotating helicopter blades (and not much use for anything else). All in all, this is state of 

the art hardware, guerrilla-film-wise. 

p. 209 "He paid no more than the lab costs"   Suddenly Frenesi is shooting film for Vond. How come? 

This key plot event is never really explained.  

p. 209 "zooming in and out every chance she got on Weed's crotch."   Apparently Frenesi is hung up on 

Weed too.  

p. 210 "'Subtle,' remarked DL."    Cutback to DL and Ditzah watching footage. As before, this effect is 

both effective and striking. 

p. 211 "She hitched a ride up to LAX with Jinx..."   Is Frenesi already "the latest girlfriend?" 

p. 211 "just kept on writing equations"    Nice scene of the wives and girlfriends de-mystifying Weed's 

mathematical preoccupation. 

p. 212 "gray mother storms..."    Fine, scary description of the gathering storm. 

p. 212 "DOJ" = Department of Justice. Or maybe Department of Jesus (see p. 213). 

p. 213 "For what? The fucking? Anything else?"   Maybe the old American weakness for authority. 

p. 213 "I want his spirit..."    Here Vond is portrayed like the Devil, or at least a vampire. (See p. 217 and 

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376.) Or the snake in Sister Rochelle's feminist Eden fable (see p. 166). 

p. 214 "She gave him the little-girl photofloods, 4800 degrees of daylight blue"   Pynchon is riffing on 

Frenesi's beautiful blue-on-blue eyes, her "wide invincible gaze....useful in a lot of situations, including 

ignorance." And sure enough, Daylight Blue Photoflood lamps do produce a color temperature of 4800 degrees 

Kelvin, with wavelengths short enough so you can shoot "outdoor," or daylight, film indoors. 

p. 215 "a funnel cloud...swung slowly..."    The storm continues. Amazing. Usually storms in fiction 

signify. What does this one mean? The uprising at CotS? The larger social conflict: fuzz against junk? Or 

Dorothy Gale's cyclone, the agent of her not being in Kansas any more? 

p. 216 "She might do it--not for him, but...because it looked like Brock's stretch of the river..."    Does 

this mean Frenesi "turns" for purely opportunistic reasons? Because she thinks Vond is gonna win? If so, she 

abandons her ideals amazingly easily. It might be that she feels so powerless and caught. 

p. 216 "light she imagined as sun plus sky, with an 85 filter in"   An extended cinematic metaphor, 

seemingly designed to impress us with how much Frenesi knows about film exposure. An 85 filter lets indoor 

film, rated at 3200 degrees Kelvin, be used outdoors (in the light of Frenesi's 4800-degree K baby blues). The 

metaphor's deeper function is as a fantasy about getting Brock out from under his rock.  

p. 217 "daylit commodity of the sixties"    daylit = Frenesi's blue orbs again. 

p. 217 "to redeem even Brock"    Scarcely believable. 

p. 217 "what she thought were closed eyelids had been open all the time"   Vampires sleep with their 

eyes open. 

 

 

CHAPTER 12 

 

Another long, complicated chapter. Thanatoid Weed Atman (in the present, and clearly a ghost, since his 

unambiguous death is described later) has an (undescribed) interview with DL and Takeshi. In a brief flashback 

(set, apparently, after still-to-be-told events at the CotS) Weed wanders around Southern California, becoming 

something of a persona-non-grata. Flashforward to a Thanatoid Roast '84 at which Weed may be Guest of 

Honor. There are silly Thanatoid jokes, and very...slow...music. In a brief cut-away, we're told that Zoyd is 

hiding out in a hard-to-find dope-growing community called Holytail. The CAMP anti-smoke assault, headed 

by ex Luftwaffe Kommandant Karl Bopp, is briefly noted. Paranoia grows in Vineland. Back at the Thanatoid 

Roast Van Meter sings "Thanatoid World."  

A couple of tourists wander in by accident: a dentist (Dr. Elasmo) and his receptionist Chickeeta. Weed 

remembers having some contact with Elasmo during the CotS events in Trasero County. A flashback details the 

story: Elasmo used to run a chain of discount dental franchises. He and Weed pass each other on the Freeway 

one day, after which Elasmo seems to be following Weed and Frenesi, after which Elasmo sends Weed a form 

requiring him to come to the dental office. For some reason, Weed complies, and spends days trapped in a 

vaguely Kafkaesque, Trial-like holding pattern. Elasmo never sees him, but for some reason Weed is 

powerfully effected by this routine: He grows deeply confused, especially about Frenesi. Moreover, his 

"disciples" are driving him crazy. Everyone is confused, paranoid, coming apart. 

Rex is disappointed by Weed's lack of revolutionary fervor. In a nested flashback Rex proves his fervor by 

giving his beloved Porsche to a group of black activists. A vaguely-fantastic flashforward to Rex's fantasy of a 

picnic-in-the-future at which Rex and Weed discuss the fact that the FBI had been setting them up, and joke 

agreeably about the time that Rex shot Weed. The fantasy-picnic fades back to the main Weed flashback: 

Behind Weed's back, Frenesi tells Rex that Weed is an FBI plant, and makes plans to film the confrontation 

when they accuse Weed directly. Who's remembering this part? Not Weed, the presumable owner of this 

flashback. Probably it's Rex. Meanwhile Frenesi keeps sleeping with Weed -- and Vond. 

Vond gives Frenesi a gun, and asks her to give it to Rex. She agrees, and there's a brief flashforward to 

Frenesi testifying before a grand jury. Back in the main flashback, Weed confronts Frenesi -- with most of 24fps 

present and filming. He seems to know that she has set him up. Rex appears and shoots Weed. In the end Rex 

seems to understand that Frenesi is responsible for the action. 24fps moves out into the night to film the 

inevitable FBI victory. Vond rescues/abducts Frenesi via a mysterious network of secret highways. She ends up 

in a sequestered "holding area" (i.e., concentration camp) "hours to the north," apparently prepared as a refuge 

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