Reader's Guide to Vineland

(For that matter, the decade was grotesquely distorted by the media while it was happening!) Worst of all, as 

time passes and fewer people actually remember the sixties, this distorted picture becomes more and more 

difficult to challenge. Vineland is Pynchon's attempt to take back his/our history; we (in the person of Thomas 

Pynchon) must define the sixties, not the fascists represented in the person of Brock Vond, the book's sadistic 

villain. Vineland is about the power that inheres in memory. 

Pynchon is not suggesting that we ought to reinstate the sixties; he is far too ambivalent about it to propose 

such a thing. The point is to understand its true nature, so we can use the good parts and learn from the 

mistakes. For all its broad comedy and free fantasy, Vineland is a serious attempt to reclaim this history from 

the Tube and its ideological sponsors: Vond, Nixon, Reagan, and the rest. 

  

The Tube 

Considering that the kids of the sixties were the first generation to grow up with TV as a ubiquitous, 

inescapable fact of life, its baleful influence, its push toward personal passivity, and its glorification of the 

authoritarian government line, are all critical elements in helping to explain the grim slide from the free sixties 

to the fascist eighties. Pynchon's attitude toward TV is easy to figure out: He loves it, but at the same time he 

distrusts it deeply. The fact that he always capitalizes it ("the Tube") shows how seriously he takes it; and his 

cascade of TV references, jokes, and sub-plots make it clear that he considers it a key element in his story. (A 

reasonably reliable source reports that Pynchon is a tube-watching insomniac.) 

Dr. Deeply's "Tubal Detox" clinic, the National Endowment for Video Education and Rehabilitation 

(NEVER), and Hector Zuniga's misadventures there, make it unmistakably clear that Pynchon thinks America's 

national addiction isn't to drugs at all, it's to the Tube. And he leaves no doubt that the authoritarian messages 

on the Tube are "official" propaganda. As Zoyd Wheeler (one of Vineland's main characters) and his pal Mucho 

Maas agree, the prime purpose of the Tube is to "keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for." At the end of the 

book, one of the younger characters makes this theme explicit when he blames TV for gutting the idealism and 

energy of the sixties. "Minute the Tube got hold of you folks," he says, "that was it..." 

Pynchon goes to great pains in Vineland to show us the frightening degree to which TV addiction has 

penetrated the culture, and to what an extent his characters have learned to define their lives in terms of the 

authoritarian messages that come flickering from the screen. Cop car sirens play the theme from Jeopardy, 

characters hum the music from The Flintstones, rock bands play tunes like "TV Crazy." Birds fly down from the 

trees to perch on windowsills so they can watch. A child, protesting a slur, complains "You think I'm one of 

those kids on Phil Donahue..." Instead of "killing" someone, two characters agree to "cancel his series."  

  

Underground Movie 

The book's structure is cinematic, and extremely complex: its story unreels in a daunting set of jump cuts 

and nested flashbacks worthy of an underground movie by Stan Brakhage or Gregory Markopoulos. Typically, 

Pynchon begins a section of narrative with one character telling (or remembering) an incident, but before too 

long he's shifted point-of-view, jumped to another linked flashback (or flashforward), or rotated into pure 

fantasy. He seldom emerges from a flashback in the same place, at the same time, or with the same character 

with which he started. Nonetheless, Pynchon is such a masterful story-teller that the narrative thread is never 

lost; his fractured editing just adds to the fun.  

The complexity of the narrative is intensified by Pynchon's frequent shifts from comedy to tragedy to 

fantasy and back. In addition, he intrudes frequently as a genial host-narrator with songs, silly names, and 

amazing puns--all of which fragment the story-telling even further. This technique seems Brechtian, but it's 

really cinematic: reminiscent of a Marx Brothers movie, or Hellzapoppin', or a Richard Lester comedy. It seems 

primarily designed to be entertaining rather than didactic: By breaking into the narrative, Pynchon lets us "enjoy 

our enjoyment," makes us aware of how exciting the story has become, before we plunge back into it. It's like 

waking from a sweet dream for just a moment, knowing we can close our eyes and pick up where we left off. 

Late in the game, we learn that we may, in fact, have been watching a movie (with a Hollywood happy 

ending) all along; in fact this movie may even have been directed by another of the book's main character, 

filmmaker Frenesi Gates. Then again, it may not have, and we may not have. Many elements in the book, like 

this one, are deliberately left ambiguous.  

  

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Story, Theme, Motivation: An Ambiguous Groove 

Vineland consists of two stories, lightly connected, both of which come together in a bogus happy ending. 

The main story revolves around Frenesi Gates, a young woman from a strong leftist background who first joins, 

and then betrays, "the movement." While there's lots of comedy in this tale, it is primarily quite serious and 

grim. The secondary story involves Frenesi's pal DL Chastain and her partner Takeshi Fumimoto; this satirical 

sub-plot (which may take up even more pages than the "main" plot) is a wildly comic adventure with elements 

taken from biker flicks, samurai martial arts thrillers, film noir, beach party movies, John Le Carre spy stories, 

cheap monster movies, and cyberpunk science fiction novels. It's a hoot. 

Pynchon uses ambiguities and uncertainties quite purposefully (and successfully) to create his effects and 

set his groove, but one ambiguity is troublesome. The entire novel turns on Frenesi's betrayal of her comrades, 

her history, and herself--but the motivation behind this central event is never spelled out convincingly. The best 

Pynchon can do is ascribe it to Frenesi's lust for the sadistic FBI man Brock Vond--but given Frenesi's 

background this motive is hard to credit (aside from her "genetic" inclination for men in uniform, inherited 

apparently from her mother). On page 260 [of the hard-cover edition of Vineland; all page references in this 

book refer to that hard-cover edition], Frenesi says: "You know what happens when my pussy's runnin' the 

show..." If this is really her only motivation, it seems like a shaky foundation on which to build a book.  

However, if you think of Frenesi as an allegory for America this makes a bit more sense. Frenesi is born of 

revolution (Sasha), but a revolution that was fought against its own attraction to authority (Sasha's sexual heat 

for men in uniforms, represented by all the "checks and balances" that got built into the American system). In 

this sense, Frenesi, who was born in 1946, can be seen as a personification of postwar America -- the America 

that gives in and votes for Nixon and Reagan, the America that lets itself get fucked. DL provides a clear 

alternative: Instead of falling in love with the symbol of authority, she becomes it: a floozy with an Uzi. 

  

The Thanatoids: Like Death, Only Different 

Another mystery, that of the Thanatoids, is a bit easier to figure. Pynchon muddies the water by giving us 

overlapping, contradictory data about these ghost-like characters. Literally, the term means "like death, only 

different," hence living-dead, or zombies. At other times Pynchon tells us that Thanatoids watch lots of TV, and 

try to advance further into the condition of death. Under this definition they could be Reaganites, couch 

potatoes, embittered hippies, or possibly the entire population of America.  

Thanatoids are also "victims of karmic imbalances -- unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..." So does 

this make the Thanatoids victims of the sixties? Another version of the preterites* in Gravity's Rainbow? Or 

simply over-determined ghosts? Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them." This might make them 

Vietnam vets, or a larger set of America's victims. At one point Pynchon describes them as a "lost tribe with a 

failed cause," which makes us think of the Herreros and the gauchos in Gravity's Rainbow. And as the book is 

drawing to a close, Pynchon says, "What was a Thanatoid, at the end of the long dread day, but memory?" 

[*The term "preterite," is a Calvinist theological reference meaning "those passed over by God, or those not 

elected to salvation or eternal life." Thus, a preterite is anyone living life with no promise of redemption -- the 

true condition of everyone who faces life honestly. Pynchon's compassion for these universal losers is central to 

his work.  

The term does not appear in Vineland, but the concept does -- and in any case, Pynchon uses it loosely. 

Since he's not really a Calvinist (nor, we suspect, a Believer in any conventional way), he often uses the concept 

to describe those without power. Vond, who has power, is elected. Zoyd, who doesn't really have power, is 

preterite -- as are the Thanatoids. DL and Takeshi, who have at least some power, are somewhere in between. 

On an even simpler level, Pynchon believes in Good (Preterite) Things and Bad (Elect) Things. Good 

Things include musicians, Hohner F harps, ukuleles, hip forties slang, zoot suits, dope, etc. (This clearly makes 

Zoyd, DL, and Takeshi Good/Preterite.) Bad Things includes power, the elite, Reagan politics, etc. (Vond is 

clearly Bad/Elect.) What makes tragedy and suspense is that there are things (and particularly people) that are 

both, or in between, or of unknown quality. Frenesi has both good and bad qualities; Zuniga does too.] 

We think the Thanatoids are not meant to be taken as "real" characters at all, but as a literary representation 

(all right, make that "symbol," goddammit) of the failed dreams of living people (or societies). Also great 

disappointments, missed opportunities, Unfinished Business, and/or awful unredeemed mistakes. These 

particular Thanatoids exist because the history of the sixties has been stolen, and falsified. Reclaiming that 

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