VLVL - Frenesi's Inscrutability

[calbert at pop.tiac.net]

>      Quoth Doug:
>      
>      >Frenesi's choice to do what she does with Brock is impossible to 
>      >understand, and it is the motor that drives VL. 
> 
>      While I will agree the, ahem, perceived inscrutability of Frenesi's 
>      motives and actions are what propels the book, I think the so-called 
>      mystery behind her choices is a typical Pynchonian red herring.

How about as a manifestation of generational entropy (with profuse 
apologies to the lister who broached this topic some months ago)?
Looking at the geneology, there seems to be a "progression" from the 
high stakes/high principle  fight enganged in by Sasha's parents, to 
the slightly less elevated, and more personal grubbing of Sasha's 
generation, continuing to the almost childish "tag/marco polo" 
sensibility which informs the travails of Zoyd-Vond-Frenesi.

THere is a cartoonish hyperbole about the tale of Jess Traverse (now 
there is a good name) and his losing battle with the giant redwood, a 
mock myth/heroic tone akin to the tales of Paul Bunyan, Casey the 
Engineer and other figures of American fable. WIth the generation 
that follows we get more of a modified "On the Waterfront" sense, the 
battle has now deteriorated into internecine struggles between the 
ostensibly good and the "rats". Of course, in time, the issues 
themselves are discounted to personal disputes like that between 
Sasha and Hub.
"Took me years to find out how completely I had been 
fooled....Toughest truth I ever had to face. Your father's never had 
a political cell in his system"

The  critical mass which bound the previous generation has 
dissipated, the stakes and the risks seem somehow a little smaller. 
This process continues with Frenensi.

"F. had absorbed politics all through her childhood, but later, 
seeing older movies on the Tube with her parents, making for the 
first time a connection between the far off images and her real life, 
it seemed she had misunderstood everything, paying too much 
atttention to the raw emotions, the easy conflicts, WHEN SOMETHING 
ELSE, SOME FINER DRAMA THE MOVIES HAD NEVER CONSIDERED
WORTH ENNOBLING (consider this choice of phrase when examining P's 
use of tv movie titles), had been unfolding all the time. It was a 
step in her political education. Names listed even in fast moving 
credits, meaning nothing to a younger viewer, were enoough to provoke 
from her parents groans of stomach upset, bellows of rage, snorts of 
contempt, and, in extreme cases, SWITCHES OF CHANNEL (oh, dear!)....
"That fascist fuck owes me two years of work, you could've gone to 
college on what that SOB will always owe me.""

Just as the emphasis here has moved from the action to those involved 
in staging the same, so, it seems, has the STRUGGLE dissipated from a 
unified front against The Man, to one in  which the young are eating 
eachother. Frenesi's generation turns this into a form of vocation, a 
considerable "de"-volution.

As a technical problem, P. has dealt with the issue of how to create 
in Frenesi both a "traitor" and a character whose motivations are 
suffiently ambiguous that the affections of both Zoyd and Vond remain 
credible. By that I mean, if F. is just a sell out, whence Z's 
continuing passion? And why should readers give a f. about her?

This section, far from being a "red herring", is a critical element 
of the novel, deftly ( does he ever do things any other way ) 
executed by an author far too often chastised for his inability to 
lend credible volume to his characters, particularly women. I have 
never had a problem seeing the hows and why's of Frenesi, and the 
family tale is, along with the Couriers Tragedy, one of my favorite 
passages in the Man's canon.

Hardly worth the bandwidth, but I had to say it.
love,
cfa