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.