Reader's Guide to Vineland
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invite her to pass through. Flashback to an encounter between Flash and his handler, Roy Ibble. Flash terrorizes Ibble, somehow, and Ibble shows Flash some official paper on Vond, and the "readiness" exercise now running in Vineland, REX 84. Ibble even gives Flash some money. We return to the airplane on its way to Vineland. Flash and Frenesi land, to be met with full film crew. Zuniga installs Frenesi and Flash in a hotel. Cut to the Cucumber Lounge, where Wayvone is doing a horrible stand-up comedy routine. Billy Barf and the Vomitones step on stage to perform "I'm a Cop." Even Zoyd is there; we learn that the feds are about to snatch his house under Reagan's Comprehensive Forfeiture Act. Worse yet, his dog Desmond is missing. The War on Drugs is getting out of hand. Zoyd considers torching his house to keep the Feds from getting it. At the same time, he cuts a deal with Isaiah and The Harleyite Order (a bunch of bikers-turned-nuns, what else?) to score assault weapons and attack the CAMPers. This looks like Zoyd's best shot; his lawyer reminds him that under current drug laws he's guilty until proven innocent. Zoyd runs into Zuniga, who tells him that Frenesi is in town. Shortly thereafter, Sasha herself rolls in for the Traverse-Becker get-together. Sasha runs into Frenesi. Suddenly the POV switches: The two slimeball film producers are telling Zuniga about the meeting between Frenesi and Sasha -- raising the possibility that the entire novel has been subsumed by the movie, which we have been watching, unawares, all along. This might even explain the otherwise-improbable Hollywood Happy Ending. In any case, Frenesi and Sasha make up, and dance the jitterbug together. Meanwhile, Prairie and DL find themselves at a surprisingly lively Thanatoid dance. The Holocaust Pixels play their big hit, "Like a Meat Loaf." Weed and Prairie discuss his Thanatoid condition (which seems to be improving), and grow lovey-dovey. Prairie heads for the Traverse-Becker get-together, where she meets Frenesi at last. Suddenly we find ourselves in full Hollywood Happy Ending Mode. The meeting between Prairie and Frenesi (which is reported only briefly) seems cordial and somewhat anti-climatic. The picnic roars on. Hubbell Gates shows up with his arc lights and fires up the sky. He and Frenesi make up too. Zoyd and Flash discover much in common (such as Frenesi), and forge the beginnings of an only-moderately-uneasy peace. Prairie and Justin become pals. Zoyd plans to go on 60 Minutes with his story, hoping that TV exposure will work better than armed rebellion to get his house back. (Given the main theme of the novel, he's probably right.) Prairie goes to sleep in a bag in the woods. Suddenly Vond appears, hanging in the air above her, winched down from a helicopter. Prairie insults him and recites the sacred words of exorcism ("Get the fuck out of here!") Vond withdraws, his budget line suddenly canceled. The picnic roars on. Vato and Blood drive Vond to Hell. Takeshi and DL dance at the Thanatoid Ball; in a brief set of nested flashbacks we learn that they have agreed to cancel the dreaded no-sex clause. Several unresolved plot ends are hastily tied off by the invention of certain, um, unrelenting forces and faceless predators who, we now discover, hijacked that Kahuna airplane and monster-stomped the Chipco factory. In the woods, Prairie finds herself (inexplicably) begging Vond to come back and take her away, but fortunately Vond has gone to Hell. She is visited, instead, by the missing dog Desmond, who wakes her up by licking her face.
concept/buzzword. The property that makes a thing fractal is that it looks the same at any scale -- like a coastline. For this to be true, the fractal object must be made of pieces that look like tiny versions of the whole, and these pieces must be made of similar looking, littler pieces...on to infinity. (The notion of "complications that might go on forever," p. 381, is very Pynchonesque.) Computer graphics programs based on this principle can create complexities that increase as long as you care to wait. Pynchon's use of "fractal" here draws a great word-picture of crinkly, cartoon-like aroma waves tickling noses of all sizes. He's obviously been keeping up with his reading.
addicted to the Tube. Maybe that's how come they let Vond and his fascists take over. p. 325 "Tokkata & Fuji" = Toccata and Fugue. p. 325 "What was a Thanatoid, at the end of the long dread day, but memory?" The answer at last. Sort of. p. 325 "Bach's 'Wachet Auf': one of the best tunes ever to come out of Europe" It's Resurrection Day! And weirdly enough, this does wake up the Thanatoids. Is Pynchon a smart-ass or what? p. 325 "the peculiar band between 6200 and 7000 KHZ" Why peculiar? p. 325 "false cities of gold" Pynchon playfully compares these mythical malls to the seven cities of Cibola, which kept Coronado on the run so long. p. 326 "The Noir Center Mall" The shops are puns on famous film noir titles: Bubble Indemnity = Double Indemnity; Lounge Good Buy = The Long Goodbye; Mall Tease Flacon = The Maltese Falcon; The Lady 'n' the Lox = Lady In the Lake. p. 327 "Che, you're rilly evil" The relationship between Prairie and Che echoes that of Frenesi and DL. p. 327 "Brent Musberger" was a TV sportscaster who got his biggest exposure when NBC covered the 1988 Olympics. NBC let him go in 1990. It made quite a media splash. He relates to the next line, and Pynchon's theme about people who are observers rather than makers of reality.
Berry's song? Probably all of the above, plus a Pynchonian takeoff on Muzak (the "oboe-and-string rendition.") See also "New Age mindbarf" on p. 330.
black and red underwear on "bad girls" is reminiscent of Pirate Prentiss' involuntary, ejaculatory response to a certain photo, delivered to him via V2, in Gravity's Rainbow.
for him...white body and black uniform-of-the-night.... Lipstick...prevails like blood.... She is naked now, except for a long sable cape and black boots with court heels. Her only jewelry is a silver ring with an artificial ruby...an arrogant gout of blood..." p. 333 "...Juvenile Hall badasses..." More badasses. p. 333 "...conical black heaps smoked, glowed, flared here and there into visible fire..." The scene in which Vond burns the 24fps footage is quite horrible -- and extremely important. By destroying 24fps' records of the Sixties, he clears the way for his rewritten fascist version. With no evidence to prove him wrong, who would dare to argue with "official" history? p. 334 "a restored Vicky" = Victorian house. p. 334 "not only dropping but also picking up, dribbling and scoring three-pointers..." Total basketball metaphor for Hector's name dropping. p. 337 Hollywood producers "Sid Liftoff" and "Ernie Triggerman" More cool names. p. 337 "bizcochos" = Spanish for "biscuits, cookies." p. 337 "lizard-skin etui" Etui = a four letter word made of odd letters, therefore useful to crossword constructors, and meaning "small case." Pynchon does crossword puzzles? Maybe he just loves words. p. 338 "arranged for Sid to work off the beef...[by making] an antidrug movie..." This plea-bargain echoes a real deal cut by Godfather producer Robert Evans to avoid doing hard time on a cocaine bust. Evans made several anti-drug spots for TV, as promised, but apparently (according to subsequent courtroom testimony) he kept on using the stuff anyway. p. 338 "Roy Ibble" Another cool name. p. 339 "sudden monster surge of toilet flushing...and...cold air" A new Pynchonian fable: Dope paranoia results in Hollywood fog bank. p. 340 "Larry Talbot" = The Wolfman in those old Hollywood monster movies. p. 342 "Sounds real natural to me." A math joke. 2.71828 is "e," the root of the series of "natural" logarithms. p. 342 "43'd" = half of 86'd. (See "octogenarihexation" on p. 186.) Being 43'd is like being a little pregnant. p. 343-344 Song: "Es Posible." Music-biz schtick at the end makes it even funnier. Also hilarious: the Yüklə 330,83 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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