Reader's Guide to Vineland

p. 180 "I'm Chip! I'm Dale!"    A sly comparison of chipmunks: Disney's cartoonic Chip 'n Dale Vs. 

Bagdasarian's sonic Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. 

p. 186 "octogenarihexation" = 86'd = tossed out.  

p. 186 "Yuroks"    Being Indians, the Yuroks are, naturally, preterite in the Pynchon universe. The woge 

(note lower case) seem to be Yurok Lorax'; ultra-preterite. 

p. 187 "Bernard Herrmann"    The famous film composer, whose credits include, among many other 

great picture soundtracks, Hitchcock's Psycho [1960]. 

p. 187 "A Toyota in the treetops"    Is this a tip of the hat to the boat in the tree in Marquez's famous novel 

of magic realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude? 

p. 188 "...vanish unaccountably between Shade Creek and the V & B pound, as Thanatoid units...had 

been known to do..."    Vanishing Thanatoid cars may push the envelope of fantasy a bit too far. And yet, and 

yet... They wind up in the tops of trees, you see. It's kind of like 'toon cars: 'toons can drive real cars, real people 

can drive 'toon cars. Plus, it sets up (much later) the disappearance of Vond's ride in Chapter 15. 

p. 188 "Sate..."   A totally abrupt scene-change to Takeshi's, a literary jump cut.  

p. 188 "Weed Atman"    Another great name. Weed = marijuana. Also perhaps, an echo of Steven Weed, 

abandoned boyfriend of heiress Patty Hearst, which raises a very faint reverberation of Frenesi as Patty-in-

reverse. Atman = Hindu for breath, the principle of life, the World Soul.  

p. 188 "Prairie was hearing this, in her turn, from DL..."   Prairie breaks into the narrative, bouncing us 

unexpectedly back to the present. These abrupt break-ins by Prairie are fun.  

p. 189 "Variety Loaves...not, as once supposed, safely dead but no, only, queerly, sleeping..."    

Thanatoid lunch meat!  

p. 190 "Me gotta go"    A line from Richard Berry's "Louie Louie." 

p. 191 "FFAR"    Obviously military hardware, but what does it stand for? 

p. 191 "Kick Out the Jambs"    If this is a reference to the MC5 tune, Pynchon (or his editor) should have 

known that the correct spelling is "Jams." 

 

 

CHAPTER 10 

 

Prairie, DL and Takeshi drive to LA, where (it seems) Takeshi maintains a high-tech detective office in 

Century City. A robot fridge offers them drinks and sings them cute songs. Prairie asks again about Frenesi, and 

DL takes her to see another old comrade in arms, ex-24fps film editor Ditzah Pisk Feldman. Ditzah shows reels 

of old footage, which cross-fade into a flashback/reminiscence of radical filmmaking days. A brief history of 

24fps. We "see" footage Frenesi shot of Brock Vond -- presumably their first contact. This cross-fades to sexy 

dialogue from that meeting: the initial seduction. The chapter ends with a flashforward, or at least a mild 

foreshadowing of the future, with 24fps trapped at College of the Surf in Trasero County during some radical 

political confrontation, and an ominous hint of dreadful events-to-come. 

   

p. 192 "Zero Profile Paint & Body"    Another zero. 

p. 192 "proprietary lacquer" makes Trans-Am invisible. A distant echo of Imipolex G in GR? 

p. 193 "little robot fridge [named Raoul], with two round video screens...each with an image of a 

cartoon eye."    This is so cute! And, significantly, this robot icebox delivers "refrigerator tunes." 

p. 193 "tachyon chamber"    Science fiction window dressing, presumably an imaginary subassembly of 

the make-believe time machine. Tachyons are whimsical sub-atomic particles; the root is from the Greek = 

swift.  

p. 193 "exactly a tenth of a second after the warranty ran out, the 'sucker blew..."   Clearly a hair-

trigger critical-need-detector.  

p. 194 "distant wash of freeway sound, the concrete surf"   Nice writing. Is this the sound beer-riders 

hear? Or Chuck Berry's "highway sound" (from "Maybelline")?  

p. 195 "ECO stock"    See note, p. 116. 

p. 196 "grown up in New York City and, except for geographically, never left it..."   Ah, we know the 

type. 

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p. 197 "Xanthocroid looks"    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) classified mankind into types, 

according to physical appearance. Xanthochroi, one of his classes, is a subdivision of the Leiotrichi, or smooth-

haired type, having yellow or light-colored hair and a pale complexion. This is the prevailing type in Northern 

Europe. Aryan. Either Pynchon, his editor, or his typesetter has dropped the "h" in "chroi." 

p. 197 "Sledge Poteet"    Cool name.  

p. 198 "When backs were left uncovered and chores undone..."   The interpersonal dynamics of 24fps 

are very convincing. 

p. 198 "Tsuris" = Yiddish for "trouble." 

p. 198 "Tzimmes" = Yiddish for "a state of confusion." Yiddish is very rich in words for trouble and 

confusion.  

p. 199 "shaygetz" = Yiddish for "non-Jewish man." This one happens to be Brock Vond. 

p. 200 "this one [shot] of Brock ended up on a bedsheet"   Specifically, this means projected on an 

improvised bedsheet screen, but of course it also foreshadows the smell of sexual developments before the fact.  

p. 200 "...you got some real pretty takes of this creep..."   DL catches on right away that Frenesi is falling 

for Vond. 

p. 200 "The roll ended."    But the flashback continues. Very smooth transition. 

p. 201 "Then a man in a uniform, with a big pistol, would have to make you come"   Sinister/sexy 

wordplay foreshadows the rapid development of Vond's takeover of Frenesi, and her infatuation with him. It's 

actually a microcosmic bondage scene, in which Frenesi, the bound partner, is freed of responsibility and guilt. 

p. 201 "grid-access devices"    Some resonance here to Gravity's Rainbow, and the tale of Byron the Bulb. 

p. 202 "You don't die for no motherfuckin' shadows"   Good advice. 

p. 203 "CZ gas"    High-powered tear gas--but note that the initials are the same as DL's Czech motorcycle. 

 

 

CHAPTER 11 

 

College of the Surf in Trasero County is located at the edge of a cliff, between the ocean and a large military 

base. It's a conservative Republican school with a compliant, no-nonsense student body. Weed Atman is a math 

professor with lots of ex-wives and girlfriends. One day, for no particular reason, someone lights a joint in 

Dewey Weber Plaza and all hell breaks loose. Instantaneously, CotS is radicalized, or more precisely hippie-

ized, since (as was usually the case, as we recall) most of the kids just want to par-tay.  

The cops move in to restore order by breaking people's heads. Weed is radicalized, and leads a group of 

students to safety at the apartment of a far more radical/political grad student, Rex Snuvvle. Snuvvle envisions 

himself counseling Weed and turning him into an exemplary revolutionary, but Weed (while a good non-violent 

leftie) is less interested in Marxist analysis than sex and rock 'n' roll.  

Despite the cops, the uprising flourishes. CotS reconstitutes itself as the People's Republic of Rock and Roll. 

24fps arrives to record the revolutionary event. Frenesi, we are told, is now shooting for (and sleeping with) 

Brock Vond. Shortly, she is sleeping with Weed as well. We witness the rapid progression of Frenesi's interest 

in Vond from relatively innocent cooperation (Vond pays the lab costs for extra dupes of her footage), to 

shackups in airport motels. Finally Frenesi flies to Oklahoma City for a major meeting with Vond: fucking and 

strategizing while a furious tornado gathers outside their hotel room. Frenesi seems to be in love with Vond, 

who urges her to betray Weed.  

  

p. 204 "legendary Trasero County coast"    Why legendary? This is Pynchon's second reference to an 

unexplained "legendary" location. Is he just hot on this locution, or are we missing something? In any case, 

Trasero is probably San Clemente. Why else a statue of Nixon?  

p. 204 "a military reservation"    Probably Camp Pendleton. However, military bases are everywhere in 

California, and especially everywhere in this novel. Note the shadowy Base in Chapter 6. The Base itself is 

unknown, but its periphery is marked by sub-communities like "Gate 9." 

p. 204 "College of the Surf"    Probably Whittier College, Nixon's alma mater. 

p. 204 "music...finding the ears of sentries...like hostile-natives sounds in a movie about white men 

fighting savage tribes."   Great writing, and a powerful vision of a "free" campus next to a military base. 

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