Reader's Guide to Vineland

referring to death. 

p. 143 "By the time...gods of the sky."    Note that this immensely long and complicated sentence takes up 

more than half the page!  

p. 145 "Singapore Sling"    A frivolous cocktail with a pleasant flavor and a lethal punch: the signature 

drink of the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, a British colony taken by the Japanese in WWII. 

Conceivably, Minoru might have been stationed there, and picked up a liking for this tourist syrup. 

p. 146 "Chuck, the world's most invisible robot"   Like the fastest draw in the West. Want to see it again? 

p. 146 "some planet-wide struggle had been going on for years"   More Pynchonian paranoia. 

p. 146 "the Himalayan caper"    Story is written in mock Le Carre shorthand. Here (as elsewhere) 

Pynchon penetrates to the essence of a genre and gives us a few masterly strokes that evoke the same effect as 

an entire novel by a lesser writer. 

p. 146 "pirate ships of the stratosphere"    Presumably, they mount attacks like the one on the Kahuna 

flight. 

p. 147 "We called you -- the Kid."   As in, "I never did the Kenosha Kid?" (See Gravity's Rainbow, p. 60.) 

p. 147 "disco music coming out the club doors"   Cyberpunk atmosphere. 

p. 148 "The Yak Doc Workshop"    This may be a riff on Doc Yak, a comic book character. 

p. 148 "Takeshi...saw Vond...and thought...it was himself..."   Vond and Takeshi look alike. Does this, as 

they say, signify? Takeshi as anti-Vond? It's hard to imagine a dark Japanese and a light Caucasian looking 

alike, but anyway, there's one for each of the tomatoes: an adjuster (insurance or karma, ma'am?) for DL, and a 

badass for Frenesi.  

p. 149 "gaijin" = Japanese for foreigner, stranger, outsider. 

p. 149 "Found a cab"    Once again Prairie startles us by breaking into the gripping flashback narrative, but 

this time the present-tense Takeshi breaks in with her, having just arrived at the SKA retreat. Very cinematic. 

Takeshi moves instantaneously from past to present, a double-exposure match-dissolve effect. 

p. 149 "Moe!"   The first of several references to The Three Stooges, a nothing-if-not-preterite comedy trio 

specializing in crude, cruel slapstick.  

p. 150 "fingering its smooth rigid contours"   The mock-porno is cute. 

p. 151 "I couldn't see shit."    DL mistakes Takeshi for Vond because of her fuzzy contact lenses. This 

mistaken-identity riff is worthy of Shakespeare at his most far-fetched and funny.  

p. 151 "Eeoo!"    Flash! Pynchon's ear fails! This just isn't as close to the Valspeak expression of disgust as 

we expect from our boy. The transliteration needs a little more "u" or something. 

p. 153 "Fuckin' Vond. He's the Roadrunner."   Yes, he is. 

p. 154 "Licensed DOM's" = Doctor of Medicine? 

p. 155 "Ninjette Coffee Mess"    Navspeak. In the military, particularly the Navy, coffee mess is a little 

area where the coffee maker, cups, etc. are kept. 

p. 156 "dorai kuriiningu" = "dry cleaner" More Jive Japlish. 

p. 157 "Not a bar, Fumimota-san."    Silly joke, nicely placed. 

p. 158 "Evoex"   The etymology of this new tranquilizer is clearly from the bacchanalian ejaculation (and 

crossword puzzle word) "evoe!"  

p. 159 "Michiko Yomama"    A nasty pun, based on the black insult, "Yo' mama!" Let your guard down 

for a second, and the guy slips in one of these every time. 

p. 160 "Nukey"    Orgasm and atomic detonation meet in one of Pynchon's most awful/wonderful puns 

(nuke = nookey).  

p. 161 "technically dead"    Since Takeshi lives without fear, this makes him a perfect samurai, and echoes 

the idea on p. 29 about how a samurai is always prepared to die. 

p. 162 Song: Just Like a William Powell.    Echoes "Like a Meat Loaf" (p. 363), and, of course, Dylan's 

"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."  

p. 163 "Which reminds me, about your PX bill..."   If you had any doubts about the samurai/ninjette 

subplot being for laughs, this page should convince you. 

p. 164 "Puncutron"    An imaginary therapeutic device whose name suggests an infernal combination of 

eastern medicine (acupuncture) and high-energy western technology (cyclotron). There's a bit of "punk" in 

there, too. 

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p. 164 "Detractors included...managed to keep."   A silly sentence, written in painful mock-German 

syntax for no discernible reason. 

p. 164-165 "Taiwanese Healthy Brain Aerobics"   More foolishness, this time mixed with music. The 

selection of tapes for Puncutron listening includes The All-Regimental Bagpipes play Prime Time Favorites (the 

Tube again!), and perhaps Pynchon's best judgmental title: The Chipmunks Sing Marvin Hamlisch. 

p. 166 "...men convinced us that we were the natural administrators of this thing 'morality'..."   Sister 

Rochelle's feminist Eden parable suggests an interesting modern scenario: Frenesi = Eve, DL = Lilith, Vond = 

Serpent. This would help explain Frenesi/America's irresistible attraction for the authoritarian Vond. 

p. 167 "The Ordeal of the Thousand Broadway Show Tunes"   Transcendental malarkey. 

p. 167 "YOUR MAMA EATS, how can we resist?"   Aggro dining. 

p. 169 "Cheapsat"    Preterite communications personified. 

p. 170 "Like Death, Only Different."    While this is a nice definition of the "oid" suffix, it begs the 

question of exactly what Thanatoid's are.  

p. 170 "But we watch a lot of Tube"    Thanatoids watch lots of TV, trying to advance further into the 

condition of death. This makes them Reaganite kids? Couch potatoes? Embittered hippies? Everyone in 

America? Anyway, advancing further into the condition of death is only a restatement of the law of entropy, 

which may mean that everyone in the universe is a Thanatoid. 

p. 171 As Takeshi reaches for pie, he's "checking the edges of the frame."   Does this mean he's in a 

film? Or is Pynchon just grabbing a handy cinema term? 

p. 171 Takeshi tries to "go the opposite way! Back to life!"   This anti-entropic movement makes him a 

great hero, a symbol of intelligence (the only truly anti-entropic entity), the life force.  

p. 172 "Shade" (as in Shade Creek) = ghost. 

p. 172 "thick fluids in flexible containers" = scumbags. 

p. 172 "The Woodbine Motel"    Harks back, perchance, to the 1870's, the Union Pacific railroad scandal, 

and the Credit Mobilier. When one party was asked, under oath, where the money was, he replied that it had 

"gone where the woodbine twineth." 

p. 172 "The Zero Inn"    Very thanatoid, preterite and Zoyd-like. Also another zero. 

p. 173 Thanatoids are "victims of karmic imbalances -- unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..."   

So are the Thanatoids victims of the Seventies? Or another version of the preterites in Gravity's Rainbow? 

Maybe they're just over-determined ghosts of some sort. This description is similar to the kind of thing that 

psychics talk about when they're trying to make your poltergeists go away; it's the unresolved baggage that 

keeps the ghosties on the move, and out of wherever they belong. Remember, too, that Shade Creek is "a 

psychic jumping-off town" where the Thanatoids wait "for the data necessary to pursue their needs and aims 

(i.e., ghostlike revenge) among the still living..." (p. 171) 

p. 173 "Although the streets were irregular and steeply pitched..."   The description is an attempt to 

capture the effect of an Escher drawing--or perhaps the expressionist sets in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920]. 

p. 174 Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them."   Here they seem like left-over hippies, 

Vietnam vets, America's victims. Preterites who want revenge.  

p. 175 "Karmic adjustment"    Well, yes, it's a nice progression from insurance adjustment, but what does 

Takeshi actually do? Prairie is still wondering on page 192, and DL never lets on. In any case, it looks like these 

Thanatoids are dead California yuppies; a resource to be exploited by preterite tradesmen.  

p. 175 "interesting work with airplanes"    So, during World War II Takeshi was a kamikaze -- hence the 

same Takeshi who's in Gravity's Rainbow! (See Viking edition, page 690) This brings up an interesting, though 

peripheral issue: As a Kamikaze, Takeshi flew a Zero. A-and there's a reference on page 672 (of GR) to "Zeros 

bearing comrades away," reminding us of those human lives as binary code in God's PC. As we've noted, there 

are lots of other "zero" reverences (that's a pun, not a typo) in Vineland.  

p. 176 "Domo komarimashita!" = Japanese for "Thanks a lot!" or "You're welcome." 

p. 178 "Interpersonal Programming and the Problem Towee"   Pynchon definitely has an attitude on 

this kind of California stuff. He also seems to have a grudge against Mercedes drivers. 

p. 178 "Sounds like the team I bet on last week."   Vato gets to make the bad pun this time. This is a great 

montage of the growing relationship between Vato, Blood, Takeshi, and DL. 

p. 179 "Vato wanted it to be a sitcom."    Another example of how deeply TV has invaded our thoughts. 

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