Reader's Guide to Vineland
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clear motivation for this series of events. p. 294 "...a shaggy monolithic slab..." A great joke about the huge brick of weed that Zuniga plants at Zoyd's pad. "Let me guess," says Zoyd, thinking of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's monolith, "2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]." "Try 20,000 Years In Sing Sing [1933]," replies Zuniga. This joke is especially funny because both titles include numbers, and because both guys include scholarly references to the years the films were made. (Pynchon, of course, has been doing this throughout, but this is the first time he does it in dialogue).
California notion that men should "get in touch with their feelings" and, presumably, cry their little hearts out. However, Zoyd, who has gotten used to crying, is finding out that, in fact, big boys don't cry.
from basion to nasion, expressed as a percent of the latter. Aren't you glad you asked? p. 299 "who feared nothing unless it was taking apart a transmission" Vond's Scorpiopic self- destructiveness is compared to that of the "beer outlaws" of Zoyd's youth (see page 37). This observation is quite accurate: Only advanced automotive nerds can take transmissions apart (and get them back together again).
p. 298-301 "I know how to take care of Frenesi, asshole..." Vond is unbearably cruel and sadistic in this interview with Zoyd. Unlike the hero of "Leader of the Pack," the lyrics to which Pynchon uses for a joke on p. 270, Vond is both bad and evil. What an asshole! And he really hates hippies -- presumably for being childish. But who's really being childish here? p. 299 "those rectal spasms of fear" Zoyd once again experiences this not-so-leit-but-definitely-motif in Vineland. (See also pages 10, 45, 116, 207.) p. 300 "Not the Earth Brock was acquainted with" A great line! p. 300 "...squealing, screaming guitar solos that defied any number of rules, that also lifted the blood and reassured the soul..." Could be Jimi Hendrix. Or a description of Vineland. But mainly it gives Zoyd an idea that the "real" world still exists, and so will he. p. 301 "she calls up one night..." Vond seems interested in making sure that Frenesi won't be able to find Zoyd and Prairie. Of course this is contradicted by the "public act of craziness" that Vond has insisted Zoyd perform.
Frenesi surrendered her identity to Vond first; bondage before intercourse. There's a distant echo here of Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues": "She got a mortgage on my body, now, and a lien on my soul." p. 302 "the count at 5:30 AM" Body count, that is -- a basic security measure in prisons. p. 303 "EPT" ? Help us, somebody! p. 303 "Agustin Lara tunes" = Hispanic shitkickin' music. p. 303 "conjunto" = Spanish for "small band," or "combo." p. 303 "los vatos de Chiques" "Chicano dudes." p. 307 "Prairie kept waking up every couple hours, all the way back to her old baby ways." This is true baby stuff. Is Pynchon a daddy? Consider also all the baby details, and Prairie's teenagerhood. This is hard stuff to get from a book, but with Pynchon's genius for bringing research alive you never know.
course") ex-husband of Oedipa Maas, and one of the main characters in The Crying of Lot 49, in which Mucho is a DJ disgusted by his former incarnation as a used car salesman for a group called N.A.D.A., and becomes dependent on LSD. p. 308 "Paranoids concert at the Fillmore" CL49 fans will recall that Mucho's ex, Oedipa, was briefly hung up on Miles, lead singer of this pre-punk group. p. 308 "absquatulation" Absquatulate is a coined word, apparently meaning to make off, or decamp. p. 309 "guest stash" A special supply of smoke for visitors was not uncommon in the houses of serious weedheads at this time. However, since Zoyd can't find the guest stash at Mucho's house he has to roll his own. Bummer!
p. 310-311 "Dr. Hugo Splanchnick" The entire Splanchnick sequence is immensely funny, including Pynchon's use of "snoot croaker" to describe the doc's specialty. p. 311 "stop-me-search-me VW bus" The epitome of Sixties California hippie culture, which (wonderful to say) continues to survive, everywhere, to this very day. p. 311 "'Aw' said the dopers, the speech balloon emerging from their tailpipe" All of a sudden, we're in 'toontown. p. 312 "...me entiendes como te digo?" = Spanish for "Unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?" p. 313-314 "I guess it's over..." It seems likely that this is Pynchon delivering the "nut paragraph," as journalists call the central idea in a story. This dialogue seems heartfelt -- especially the stuff about the tube ("keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for,") and rock 'n' roll ("just another way to claim our attention,") and "Soon they're gonna be coming after everything, not just drugs but beer, cigarettes, sugar, salt, fat, you name it, anything that could remotely please any of your senses...," and "It was the way people used to talk." Yes, it was.
Hub Gates has: joined the approved union, settled down, stopped making a fuss. p. 314 "Enjoy it while you can, while you're light enough for that glass to hold you." Prairie on top of the Hip Trip pinball machine is a marvelous image capturing the fragility of the moment, the certainty of loss, age, death.
Great intro to Zoyd in Vineland. p. 320 "spool tenders, zooglers, water bucks and bull punchers" Logging jobs. p. 321 "Many would be the former tripping partners and old flames who came over the years to deal with each other this way across desktops or through computer terminals, as if chosen in secret and sorted into opposing teams...." Some folks get on Welfare, and others administer it. Another incarnation of the binary/preterite metaphor.
A long, complicated, final chapter. Morning breaks in a pasture, as everyone gets ready for the annual Traverse-Becker Family Picnic, the big get-together of Frenesi's folks (i.e., The Left). Morning cracks also in Shade Creek. Flashback to Prairie and her hard-core sexpot pal Che, prototypical teenage mall rats in Southern California. A nested flashback to the Great South Coast Plaza Eyeshadow Raid. Flashforward to the original flashback, in which the girls raid Macy's, stealing sexy lingerie (easy there, Pynchon). We flashforward again, but not all the way--only far enough to witness Vond's raid on Ditzah's house. All the 24fps footage is burned. Back in the present Prairie, DL and Takeshi head for Shade Creek. CAMP anti- marijuana raids (courtesy of Vond and his army, now bivouacked at the Vineland airport) are coming on a daily basis. Unlikely as it seems, Zuniga's anti-drug film is actually in production! A crew is on location in Vineland, preparing to film Frenesi's biopic as an exploitation feature. Flashback to Zuniga's Tubal Detox treatment, which seems woefully ineffective. There's a funny song about TV: "The Tube." Flashforward (or sideways) to a meeting in which Zuniga cuts the film deal with two Hollywood producers; the ways are greased by the fact that he has them at his mercy on drug charges, not to mention the fact that the film community is in terror of a threatened Drug Use Investigation reminiscent of the HUAC hearings. Zuniga finds out that Frenesi and Flash have surfaced in Las Vegas; he flies there to meet her, in hopes of convincing her to appear in (and maybe even direct) the film. They meet at the Club La Habenera, an evocation of pre-Castro Cuba. There's a funny song ("Es Posible.") Frenesi is less than enthusiastic until Zuniga shows her a photo of Prairie; if she returns to Vineland to make the film she can see her daughter. Zuniga reveals that Vond's funding has been cut -- not that this seems to have slowed his big-budget anti-drug campaign in Vineland. Flashback to the breakup of Zuniga's marriage. Returning to Vegas, Frenesi and Zuniga dance. She agrees to fly to Vineland, bringing Flash and their son Justin. There's a slight problem at the Vegas airport when Frenesi refuses to cross a picket line, but the picketers overhear her pro-union rap as she argues with Flash, and
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