Reader's Guide to Vineland
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pre-Castro Cuban theme park, Holiday For Fascists. p. 344 "board fading" = fading slowly and smoothly, as if via a volume slider on a recording studio control board. p. 345 "Tubal fantasies...pushing their propaganda message that cops-are-only-human...turning agents of government repression into sympathetic heroes. Nobody thought it was peculiar anymore, no more than the routine violations of constitutional rights...now absorbed into...American expectations." Good points, all, but isn't it a bit out of character for Frenesi the Betrayer, the biggest cop lover in the novel, to be fronting these thoughts for Pynchon? What's happening here, we think, is that Pynchon is starting to set up Frenesi for her rehabilitation as part of the big Happy Ending. p. 346 "the Meese Police" = Reagan's DOJ (Department of Justice). p. 347 "Mad Dog Vond" Echoes Bogart as Mad Dog Roy Earle" in High Sierra. But Vond really is crazy.
p. 347 "Since '81, kids were coming in all on their own askin about careers..." Too true, too sad, and it undercuts the Happy Ending rather seriously (at least as a pointer to the real world.) p. 348 "in the movie of his life story" A not-quite-made-up film. p. 349 Vond is "waitin' for somethin'." OK, but what? Reluctantly we must point out that none of Pynchon's many explanations bear close examination. (See footnote to the plot synopsis, Chapter 4.) p. 350 "the pink slip to his heart" = title of ownership. Before the days of automobile titles, the portion of a California car registration that conveyed ownership was colored pink. Hence the brag in the Beach Boys' "Little Deuce Coupe" about "I got the pink slip, daddy!" (meaning, "I'm holding the paperwork required to stake the LDC on a streetlight drag race, so whatchu waitin' for, dude?") p. 351 "Pretend there's a frame around [your parents], pretend they're a show you're watching..." Once again, TV is America's common reference point. p. 351 "'Uh-oh,' said Frenesi." Frenesi refuses to cross the airport picket line. This is a bit on the too- little-too-late side for a professional class-traitor, but it's also quite believable. p. 352 "the bowl haircut, etc." Another reference to The Three Stooges. p. 352 "all 'em deeply personal li'l ones and zeros got changed to somebody else's" Roy Ibble, Flash's former handler, explains the computer file deletions, and carries on Pynchon's binary metaphor. p. 353 "Please, no more..." Ibble crumbles in the face of Flash's anger. This is the only the first in a series of auspicious (but highly improbable) turns of the plot. The Hollywood Happy Ending is beginning. p. 353 "REX-84" = Reagan's readiness Exercise. p. 354 "...Midol America..." Another low Pynchon pun ("middle-America") referring to the popular brand of menstrual medicine. p. 354 "...the destined losers whose only redemption would have to come through their usefulness to the State law-enforcement apparatus, which was calling itself 'America,' though somebody must have known better." This describes Frenesi and Flash, though it could also describe the larger preterite population of the novel. "...law enforcement apparatus...calling itself America..." underscores Pynchon's cold fury at the process via which Frenesi/America falls for the lies of the fascists.
used for everything from wide-screen epics to deodorant commercials. It makes a nice contrast with all the "underground" Arris and Auricons.
Gumbel began as a sportscaster, then became a Today host -- where he remains to this very day. p. 356 "...one slip of the tongue..." Arguably the worst joke in any of Pynchon's novels. Gross! p. 356 "How to get an Italian Woman Pregnant." We have found two versions of this joke: Q: How do you get an Italian woman pregnant? A: And they say the Italians are stupid! Q: How do you get an Italian woman pregnant? A: Fuck her.
includes a typically Pynchon-esque fable about "prehistoric" (and mythical) 5/8-inch plumbing fittings. p. 358 "full scale kvetchathon" kvetch = Yiddish for complaint. Hence, a kvetchathon is a marathon bitch session among Van Meter's legendarily bickering family. p. 358 "kit conversions" The parts required to convert legal, semi-automatic rifles to full (and illegal) automatic operation are often available in kit form. The kits themselves are not illegal, but they become illegal if installed in non-registered weapons.
mentioned below, "They believe whatever they do, it's cool with Jesus..." p. 359 "motocross" A cycle race over rough terrain, often desert. p. 359 "May your life be full of lawyers" Supposedly, the "heavy-dutiest" Mexican curse. p. 360 Zoyd's lawyer's voice "suggested Saturday morning more than prime time" That is, it reminded one of a cartoon character. Lessee, would it be a Smurf or a chipmunk? p. 360 "What about 'innocent until proven guilty'?" "That was another planet, think they used to call it America, long time ago, before the gutting of the Fourth Amendment. You were automatically guilty the minute they found that marijuana growing on your land." Pynchon is obviously deeply pissed by this shit (as well he might be); it makes a powerful point in his argument that Big Brother and the Fascists have won. "Another planet" echoes the allegorical conversation between Zoyd and Vond on p. 300.
there, too. p. 361 "Tex Weiner" A Jewish hot dog with a ten-gallon hat. p. 361 "...fooled once again by the uniform..." So Frenesi comes by her weakness for sadistic uniformed cops genetically, via Sasha? Or is this something about how opposites need and create each other? p. 361 "Weww -- it's oow rubbish i'n'i'?" = Well, it's all rubbish, isn't it? Pynchon's fabulous ear again. p. 362 "off the scale" Techno rap, meaning too great to measure, pins the meter, etc. p. 362 "Did they scream?" A cheap, if effective, trick: Pynchon switches POV (narrators) in mid-scene, giving the tale to producer Sid, and twists the knife by making him playfully reluctant to part with details, so Zuniga has to beg.
Directed by Frenesi??? p. 362 "Kissing a young pale melon, under a golden pregnant lallapalooza of a moon." Sasha's dream is sweet and surreal, but it seems insufficiently motivated. Would she really forgive Frenesi so easily? p. 363 "Holocaust Pixels." Cool name for a rock band -- and another TV reference. (See note, p. 226.) p. 363 Song: "Like a Meat Loaf." Great song! Also the Return of the Thanatoid Lunch Meat. Also an echo of Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues." p. 363 The Thanatoids are "acting rowdier than DL or Takeshi had ever seen them." The only reverberation of the big flap that sent the karmic adjustment duo racing off for Shade Creek in the last episode. The Happy Ending rolls on.
most people fuck up and let themselves be trapped in a new life. Weed tells of looking for a just-fertilized egg in which to be reborn, "seeking out men and women in the act of sex...in a...smoke-tarnished district of sex shows and porno theaters." The Mitchell Brothers atmosphere is cute. In Tibet a lama keeps whispering the instructions in your dead ear so you don't make these little boo-boos ("couldn't find 'em, time ran out"). Pynchon implies that it's those with "too much still on [their minds]," i.e., unfinished business, that can't quite get permanently dead.
Prairie's offer is a little inconclusive, but note the zero. p. 365-366 "Thanatoids dream, though not always when we think we do--" Weed's dream is extremely powerful and the image is quite writerly. Is the coroner he's looking for "to reveal to the world at last my murder, my murderers" really Pynchon? Are the "companions" who keep trying to find this coroner the readers of Vineland? Faithful hippies? Those who refuse to buy the rewritten version of the Sixties? All of the above? Prairie says it's DL & Takeshi, Weed thinks maybe it's his parents. It might even be the Pisk sisters.
Pynchon seems aware that his readers (the "companions") may be confused. p. 366 Prairie and Weed "soon to become an item" This is the real happy ending, suggesting that young kids may seek out the truth about the Sixties. (And not just the clothes!) p. 366 "Prairie would show him secrets of pachinko..." But how did she learn them? From DL? p. 367 "the Traverse-Becker wingding" Nice image, suggesting the continuity of the Left -- although making it a picnic is surely some dark irony. (At least it's not a dinner party.) p. 367 "Octomaniacs" = again, players of crazy eights. p. 367 "the Mother situation" Nice cinematic touch, superimposing Frenesi and the Mother of Doom (the spade queen). p. 367 "with Sasha was a woman about forty, who had been a girl in a movie..." The reunion of Prairie and Frenesi, which has motivated Prairie, and haunted Frenesi, throughout most of the book, is tossed off distressingly quickly, but with at least this one great line.
way out of character. We hope! Still, "it's her way of trying to help" (p. 368). p. 368 You'd think Pynchon would devote a little more ink to the reunion of Frenesi and Prairie, but in fact Frenesi seems to be in the process of fading out here (much as Vond will do in a few pages). p. 369 "pasta dishes and grilled tofu contributed by younger elements" Hello, Becker/Traverse yuppies! p. 369 "Secret retributions are always restoring the level..." This marvelous quote from Emerson is deeply optimistic, and goes a long way toward buying off the Happy Ending. Contrasts nicely with Lombroso's "misoneism," the negative feedback loop by which society resists change.
Scantling's karmic payoff under the wheels of a chip truck. p. 370 "Take care of your dead, or they'll take care of you." Confirmation of what the Thanatoids really are (see p. 325). Also a nice restatement of Santayana's famous quote about "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it (or retake the course)."
both to Bones' habitual conversational opening to Captain James Kirk, and to Afro-American slang in which "Jim" is an all-purpose (and generally negative, being short for "Jim Crow") form of address. This is also another digital gag (white becoming black = zero becoming one). p. 370 "Zoyd and Flash went off looking for beer" Flash surfaces. No point, really, except for the overall reconciliation Pynchon is forcing on the book. p. 370 "Robert Musil" An Austrian novelist (1880-1942), whose Proustian style was marked by subtle psychological analysis. His works include Young Torless and The Man Without Qualities. p. 371 "...talking back to the tube..." The Beckers and Traverses are politically hip, shown by their talking back, and their suspicion that the "prefascist twilight" is really just "the light...coming from millions of Tubes all showing the same bright colored shadows..." TV as the true opiate of the masses -- or, as the NY commies used to say, "de messes." p. 372 Zoyd feels sorry for Flash, the "unfortunate sucker" who's still with Frenesi; he sees "the need behind the desperado lamps" (eyes). Nice phrase, nice rendition of the healing power of time and distance, and a sweet way to take leave of Zoyd, who seems to have found some peaceful place to rest -- at least for the moment.
course) is right. It's funny how so few of us saw the future, fought the Tube. McLuhan was right too, but we only thought we knew what he was talking about.
from/to Zoyd's ladylike purse-sized model in Chapter 1. p. 373 "monster Mopars dialed and eager" Mopar = the parts division of Chrysler Motors = (here) engines. Dialed = souped up. This is at least the second "dialed" reference in Vineland. It's hot-rod talk, and means more or less the same as the now old-fashioned "blue-printed." The dials refer to a machinist's dial indicators, used to bring once-stock engines into more-than-perfect condition and tune. p. 374 "speeding after moonset" Like in Thunder Road [1958], the great Robert Mitchum bootlegging thriller. p. 374 "quaquaversal beard" Quaquaversal is a geological term meaning "turned or pointing in every direction." It's a good description for a wiry beard. p. 374 "...go find [Vond] and cancel his series for him..." Another TV referent. p. 374 "found it easier now to make out...her own...face" Now that Prairie has met Frenesi she can see her own face more clearly in Zoyd's. That is, she's not Vond's daughter. More Happy Ending. p. 375 "...down out of [the helicopter], hooked by harness and cable to the mother ship above, came Brock Vond..." Is Vond's deus ex machina appearance to Prairie a dream? It could be; she was asleep. Then again, "Brock, whom his colleagues were calling 'Death From Slightly Above,' had been out [practicing]." And remember the Madwoman In the Attic (p. 274).
tire stores in southern California. p. 375-376 "The original plan had been to go in..., come down vertical, grab her, and winch back up and out--" Why does Vond want to abduct Prairie? Lust? Pure evil? This is never adequately explained. There's a bit of chat in Chapter 14 discussing Vond's interest in Prairie, but it's not developed any further. p. 376 "The key is rapture." Earlier Vond explained the disappearance of the CotS students the same way. (See note, p. 248.) p. 376 "Her tits, master--" Roscoe becomes Dwight Frye, Vampire Vond's Renfield. ("Rats, master, you promised me rats...") p. 376 Vond glows "unusually white." More evidence that he's a vampire. (A-and remember, he sleeps with his eyes open!) p. 376 "Some white male far away must have wakened from a dream." Reagan? Meese? Nixon? The white male God of the Calvinists? p. 376 "Brock...now being winched back up..." Film running backward through the projector. The image is great, but there's something troublesome here. If the novel represents the real world (as we must assume it does, or it would be no more than an empty divertissement), what "real" event in 1984 informs Vond's withdrawal and defeat? None, we think. p. 377 "Asshole, they're all together, one surgical strike..." Vond is ready to wipe out everyone -- Frenesi, Flash, Zoyd, Justin, maybe even Prairie -- just as (presumably) he wiped their computer files earlier. p. 377 "...[Vond] was gone, following his penis--" A reprise of the lyrics from "Like a Meat Loaf" (p. 363): "Well we followed our dicks just a couple o' clicks...") p. 377 Alexi appears in the clearing, carrying "an old acoustic guitar with Cyrillic stenciling on it, as if he'd been prepared to use it as a weapon." Like Woody Guthrie's guitar, on which the folksinger wrote "This machine kills fascists." p. 377 "The Movie at Nine" Pynchon gets into a great male-folksy description of a basketball movie -- the most developed of any of his synthetic made-for-TV flicks. An elect white team (the Celtics) Vs. a preterite black team (the Lakers). Obviously Pynchon is a Lakers fan. It's a story of great courage, and it sets up Vato and Blood for their "rescue" of the newly Thanatoidized Vond. Vond's car disappears (the way thanatoid vehicles do), and we get a Yurok tale by Vato, implying that by coming to Vineland Brock got too close to the land of the dead (Shade Creek). Maybe that's what woke the Thanatoids up? But by then, V&B Tow is conducting Vond across the River Styxx.
means lock on the safety of your firearm and load a live round into the chamber, leaving the weapon armed and ready to fire -- but safe to carry. (The standard 'Nam response was "Cocked and locked!" meaning "Ready when you are.") p. 378-379 "It had been an unusual sort of car..." Vond's chopper turns into an (underpowered) car, which then disappears itself. Vond's power is fading out -- and he is too. Cool image, but same problem as above. Did Vond (that is, the totalitarian power freaks he fronts for) fade out in 1984? And if not, isn't it a cheat that he does so in the novel? p. 380 "crankless" = without amphetamines. p. 381 "...she and Takeshi finally renegotiated the no-sex clause..." Happy Ending continues. "Whooee!" says DL. p. 381 "a fractal halo of complications" Typical Pynchon light-and-color show -- and the second use of the "fractal" buzzword. (It occurs on page 323 as well.) Are neural networks next? p. 382 "an ivory fescue" Fescue = a teacher's pointer of high quality. p. 382-3 "When the Earth was still a paradise, long, long ago..." Sister Rochelle's allegory about Hell and Earth may explain a bit about Thanatoids, if you wish to read it that way. p. 383 "faceless predators" This paragraph reads like Pynchon checked his outline, noticed two loose ends (the Kahuna hijack and the monster-stomped laboratory) and tied them up as quickly and crudely as possible. Sloppy work.
motivation for DL & Takeshi's "business" venture. p. 383 "the night of no white diamonds or even chicken crank" Chicken crank = the speed Takeshi has been trying to score in the form of chicken feed. There are a number of other references to Takeshi's habitual speed use, not the least of which is his epic journey eastward to the SKA and Puncutron.
"Back In the USSR?" p. 384 "You can come back...take me any place..." Prairie longs for Vond to come back and abuse her. It must be her genetic predilection for the uniform. Or, perhaps the desire to find out what was heavy enough to make her mom split. It's a bit sick, but maybe Pynchon knows his characters (and the human character) better than we do. ("Every woman adores a fascist / The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you." -- "Daddy," Sylvia Plath) In any case, Pynchon "saves" it by having Desmond return. When it comes to preterite, what can out-pret a girl's dog?
Got something to say to us? Fine! We will be glad to hear from you -- and if we aren't horribly busy we might even get back to you. In any case, thanks for getting in touch! Best,
Michael Goodwin and John Diebold (A-and check out Diebold's Personal Page at http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~johnd/) Document Outline
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