Good? Bad? The Binary of Life and Death Also Applies to Book Reviews and Computer Programs, Probably

“I hope this was a free choice book. I’m sorry, I can’t believe that a teacher would assign Pynchon in high school,” my dad says to me as I walk downstairs in the morning. "That stuff is dense.”

I kind of agree with him. Vineland was a tough read. Almost every other sentence was an allusion to something obscure, and for every reference I picked up on, there were three or four I did not. Often I would understand that something was an allusion, but not know what it was alluding to or how to look it up, as it was often a concept or an event clearly drawn from something that I obviously don’t know.

Large sections of the book, such as the meandering chapters detailing the ins and outs of DL, Takeshi, Vato and Blood, Vond’s henchman Roscoe, and Serena, seemed to be more of an expansion of themes and concepts rather than actually important to the storyline. By the time I arrived back in 1984, it was hard to remember the circumstances in which I left.

And yet, thematically, that worked well for Vineland. The past would unexpectedly become the present, drawing attention to the relationship between the two. Every character’s life becomes like a massive scrapbook of past memories that builds upon itself, triggering emotions, making connections and shaping them into their present selves. The attention to absolutely pointless detail is kind of jarring sometimes, but it almost makes it more true to life. It can be amazing sometimes, how you could barely remember the Statue of Liberty from your first trip to New York, but you can very clearly remember a weird bird feather on the sidewalk. Sometimes its the weird details that stick in people’s heads for years, and the inclusion of this not only helps to develop a scene and characters but also ties into this odd trait of memory without seeming forced or hackneyed.

Pynchon’s writing in general also seems this way. I like his work because, in some ways, it feels more organic and natural than the work of other authors. The way he structures a plot can feel messy and bizarre, but never “wrong.” And yet even though his writing seems natural, I tend to think of his stories as existing in some sort of parallel universe. As I read the book, I imagined it taking place in some alternate version of American history, and not our own. Though the book reads organically, the theatricality of many of the events, such as the divine retribution dealt upon Bud Scantling, the man who tried to silence Frenesi’s father Jess by toppling a tree over on to him, as it is revealed that he had died in an automobile accident after driving into a truck filled with wood chips, and Brock’s demise, caused by the government he devoted his life to. Yet for all its structural oddities, this book does not lack a heart. The focus on family as a walking history and a living connection to an individual’s past, is made clear, as the final scene of the book takes place at a reunion of Frenesi’s family. This book lacks the paranoid tone that often pervades novels that are rooted in politics.

Vineland was a good book. A plot summary would be too convoluted, but since the very first few flashbacks, it was pretty easy for me to zero in on “dealing with the past, whether actively or passively” as a theme. But I read that other article about fascism in Vineland, and it was clear that whoever had written it had seen the political forces at play in Vineland to be the most important theme. I think the relationship between reactionary and radical politics is probably the second most significant theme I noticed about the work. To someone with a larger knowledge of politics during this time period, the political and cultural themes may have been more relatable and easily understandable, but because I wasn’t able to connect with those, less historical themes took precedence in my personal analysis.

Do I think I understood the book? No, but I think I understood it enough to realize that I wasn’t going to understand it on the first read. There are too many different themes to focus on in a single reading, too many little details that take a second or third go to fully experience. Still, I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for an AP English class because of how complex it is (and the amount of time it would take to “fully” analyze it), but it would be nice to read it alongside other people who could possibly expand on some confusing allusions or just understanding it in general.

I feel like this novel invites analysis: there are books that I can read without looking too deeply into literary devices, but even when reading Pynchon for pleasure I have to think about it more seriously than I do with other novels. Like I mentioned before, when analyzing a Pynchon book, it isn’t necessarily about whether or not your analysis is wrong as much as it is about what you decide to analyze. While I think this novel invites discussion of politics, I wouldn’t say that I believe it to be a purely political novel. I thought it was more about relationships in the midst of, or should I say in spite of, political restructuring. I did not really discuss the cultural ramifications of the novel that are tied into the politics of Vineland as deeply as I tried to discuss politics and the past, but I think that that would be what I would be drawn to on a second read.

Overall, good book. The plot was insane, with Thanatoids, cults, ninjas, the Mafia, pot farmers, Native Americans and the DEA. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys long flashbacks, weirdly placed funny anecdotes and recent American History

What Else? Beyond the Past, Beyond Cultural Implications: What is a Person?

What makes a person, a person? I have already spoken on the sad truth of individuality in the world of Vineland. Unfortunately, because these characters are presented to us as individuals defenseless against the forces of society and their own pasts, we are forced to see them as nothing more than pawns in the hands of whatever greater power exists in this world. Even Frenesi turns her back on 24fps, her anarchist film collective, for the alluring yet bleak conformity of Brock Vond, representative of the government. Like her mother Serena, a born Communist, she was a leftist at heart but a self-proclaimed lover of a man in uniform. Frenesi is a person drawn from the traits of both her mother and the greater world around her, raised to fight, raised to shake her fists at the injustices of the world, and yet, in the face of all that, Vond is irresistible to her. It's deeply ironic that she becomes a government snitch out of love, as love, clearly associated in the novel with the bygone days of the sixties, is in opposition to the informant heavy culture of the eighties.

It’s a theme seen throughout the novel. The Thanatoids are alive only because of their inability to let go of the past. They congregate together in ghostlike towns such as the one DL and Takeshi stumble upon, Shade Creek, and spend their days glued to the television screen. They feel no emotions besides the ones keeping them from dying. A common one is revenge: a desire to make right the evils of the past. It is a commentary on the futility of everyday life: Thanatoids are so powerless in life (for example, the Vietnam vet Ortho Bob) that even in choosing death, do not even have the power to make that choice. This could also be interpreted as a commentary on the brainwashing quality of media. Tying back to the quote from the other blog posted in a previous entry, just because the government wasn’t legitimately surveilling its citizens around the clock and restricting their every movement doesn’t mean that the ubiquity of media wasn’t harmful. The endless consumption of media creates stagnation. The messages seen repeated over and over on a screen lodge into our psyche, and become a part of how we rationalize our world. A Thanatoid’s reality has effectively been replaced by the falsified reality of television.

Individuality in this book, which I believe to be critical of reactionary governments (framing Vond as the antagonist and the Wheeler family as the main cast of protagonists speaks for itself), is seen not as wrong but as impractical. Within a society that values conformity, someone who sticks out is going to be smacked down a few notches to create a uniform culture. The freewheeling political turmoil of the sixties had been repressed, shown both with Zoyd’s reliance on the government for money and Frenesi’s relationship with the embodiment of facism, Brock Vond. 

Even though the shadow of totalitarianism hangs over the Californian coast, the constant flashbacks are both a reminder that our upbringing may be responsible for who we are, but also, even though our past can be instrumental in our present and future, understanding that your past belongs to you and you alone is an assertion of free will, of creativity, of introspective thought. Prairie’s search for her mother is out of a desperate attempt to reconnect with that past, to gain that sense of self that comes with understandment and acceptance of her roots.

So, what is a person, at least in Vineland? A veritable cocktail of political, societal and personal forces, pushing a person forward and backwards at the same time. You can run all you want, but you can't escape your past, you can't escape your government, and most importantly, you can't escape yourself.

Fascism In Vineland, Or, I Don't Know Anything About The Political Environment of The 80's

In order to get a better handle on the political ideologies discussed in Vineland, I read an article online at this website:

http://www.notbored.org/vineland.html

that explained some of the political connections in a more in depth way. Though there are a lot of connections in this article, like Biblical allusions and bird motifs, that I did not pick up on in my reading and therefore I am not going to discuss here, I was specifically interested in the allusion to the novel 1984 that this article talks about. A particular line sticks out to me:

“Pynchon clearly believed that, just because the year 1984 didn't bring actual "telescreens" into every home in the country, this didn't mean that Reaganism wasn't an American form of fascism.”

This suggestion is crucial to a greater understanding of what Pynchon’s message in the novel is.

Many of the characters in this novel, in fact almost all of them, seem to be almost one-dimensional, acted upon by outside forces instead of their own will. Whether it be their own past, like DL, the ubiquitous and alluring world seen through a television screen, like Hector, the threatening anonymity of organized crime, like Takeshi, DL, and the Wayvones, or the decisions of another (Frenesi), like Zoyd, the storyline of Vineland is often driven by vague entities not quite explained. The characters are seen as somewhat helpless in the face of concepts that extend beyond themselves.

The character of Brock Vond is a person who embodies both the tightly wound control and nagging insecurities often associated with fascism. The centralized power of total fascist control is often preceded by a period of doubt and confusion, much like the turbulent sixties gave way to the reactionary

Brock was introduced formally bizarrely late into the novel for someone with such power over the central plotline, which further ties him to the concept of a faceless and oppressive authoritarian society. However, as we begin to know Brock, we see him as less of a machine and more of a human, able to make mistakes, able to be afraid. His individuality strips him of the power of anonymous control. In the end, he is nothing more than a cog in a machine, a powerful one perhaps, but just another person navigating the ravages of time, unable to escape his past.

Godzilla, Ghosts and Gunmen

It seems as if the novel has taken a broad side track. At the wedding party, Prairie’s business card attracts a mysterious woman called Darryl Louise, or DL for short. She is somehow acquainted with Frenesi, and this alone allows Prairie to trust her. They leave the party and go stay at the Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives, a hideaway in the California mountains for female ninja practitioners. Once a bastion of technique and disciplehood, it has sold out and become a resort for New Agey Valley executives who want to “reinvent themselves” and teenagers who want mystical powers with little work.

DL spends a long time discussing her history with her family, her sensei in Japan, her connection to Frenesi, and her connection with Takeshi. Throughout a particularly long chapter interspersed with brief snippets of dialogue that occur in the present between DL, Prairie and Takeshi, who had arrived to meet DL and the girl about halfway through the high-intensity story of their meeting.

Though at first, the book seems to lack focus, it basically hinges along stories of the past. Characters like Brock Vond, who have not appeared in the present narrative, have been floating around in the periphery of these vast stories, stretching across continents. In search of a focused narrative, little to no elements introduced are actually significant in any way. Things seem to be thrown in “just because,” for instance, Takeshi works for a laboratory in Japan that is decimated by a giant footprint. At first thought to be a scare tactic inflicted by some market rival, the footprint (using some bizarre foot-to-brain analysis technology) is proved to have been created by a living creature. This is often implied to be a Godzilla-like creature, who is referenced at Takeshi and Zoyd’s first meeting. During the invasion of Zoyd’s flight, he begins to play the title theme from “Godzilla: The King of the Monsters” just as a disguised Takeshi comes up to him and asks for help. It is implied that Takeshi is being hunted down because of his knowledge of this event.

Elements such as pop culture, the media, Anarchism VS Fascism, organized crime (both Mafia and Yakuza), ultraviolence, revenge, family, and death are often repeated again and again throughout the large sections of the book focused on the past. Though the primary focus seems to be on the influence of the past on the present, the book also provides commentary on the changes in these beliefs over the course of decades, through the political upheaval of the Sixties throughout what is referred to as the Nixonian Repression throughout the influx of modern fascism found in Reagan’s politics. Characters like Takeshi, DL and Zoyd are hunted by massive networks of insidious power. It does not seem to matter whether or not their pursuers are government agents or Mafia/ Yakuza operatives. They both hold the same type of power, one that seemingly transcends the passage of time because of the fact that the ideas that drive both factions are not reflections of solitary people. Their drive for revenge carries throughout time because it exists in more than one person. Pop culture references, such as movies, bands or songs, are almost like place markers, a way to pinpoint the passage of time (which, in this book, often seems to happen atypically, skipping around at random and filling in the blanks when least expected) within a singular moment of time, and whatever that entails.

The repetition of these ideas suggests significance, but what else does this book have in store?

The Beginnings

As someone who has read a bit of Thomas Pynchon, I was pretty excited to start reading Vineland. Like some of his other books, it centers on a wide cast of characters that seem to float in and out of the storyline, as the main plotline is brought up, fleshed out, forgotten, reconnected back to the story, and lost again.

Our story focuses on an aging relic of the 60’s, Zoyd Wheeler, who jumps through a window each year in order to receive his disability pension, running into an old pursuer, Hector Zuniga, who informs him that another old nemesis, the sinister and quite possibly insane D.E.A. agent Brock Vond is also after him. We slowly learn that Zoyd is a single parent, collecting his pension in hopes of supporting his young teenage daughter Prairie. We also learn that Frenesi, Zoyd’s ex-wife, is a sore subject for him, (possibly a source of some sort of unfinished business), currently in the Witness Protection Program, and somehow also connected to Brock Vond. Prairie, Zoyd’s spunky daughter, has never met her mother, but the emotions she feels, at once apprehensive and excited, at the very mention of Frenesi’s name, exposes a deep desire to meet her.

When Brock Vond comes to town with an army of soldiers, storming the peaceful Vineland, Zoyd and Prairie part ways as they try to escape whatever fate awaits them at the hand of the government. So far, I have not heard any more about Zoyd Wheeler’s whereabouts, even though he was presented as the primary character throughout the first few chapters of the book. Prairie, however, followed her boyfriend, Isaiah Two Four, down the California coast to a wedding gig.

Already, the structure of the book is unusual. Within the chronological plotline, the characters have only travelled around California. Yet this book spends just as much time moving backwards in time as it does forward, creating a sort of paradox where very little actually seems to happen amidst the heavy backstory. Entire chapters consist of flashbacks triggered by a seemingly insignificant moment. As Prairie turns to leave, Zoyd hands her a business card for a man named Takeshi Fumimota, who is in the Karmic Adjustments trade. Rather than just explaining the circumstances that lead to Zoyd getting his hands on the business card, an entire chapter is devoted to the trans-Pacific flight that lead to his final moments with Frenesi that lead to a new job as an on-flight musician for a shady airline company that lead to a terrifying invasion of the plane by a dark aircraft full of heavily armed elite fighters halfway through a flight that lead to Zoyd protecting a suspicious figure from the mysterious invaders who gave him the business card as a token of his gratitude.

It is too soon in the book to identify any themes, but the focus on the past is difficult to ignore. Each character’s backstory is elaborated on to a degree that almost becomes pointless, as the tales of their past (often used in literature to justify current motivations) is ultimately given more focus than the actions of the characters in present time. What could this mean? Only more time will tell.