VL[8] Frenesi, Art and Machine

[Doug Millison]

Thanks,  Terrance, for this discussion of Frenesi in terms of art and the
machine. It might also be interesting to look at her relationship to TV,
which plays such a big part of the novel. Pynchon doesn't really portray
her as much of a TV-watcher, does he (there is her youthful experience,
watching the Tube with those strange birds singing along with the
commercials, but she doesn't seem attentive to it and caught up with it as
an adult the way Zoyd is, for example), and as such she stands in contrast
to characters like Zoyd, Prairie, Hector and others who seem to experience
life in terms of what they see on TV (at least that's the way they talk
about what they do).  Doesn't Frenesi put herself in the position of being
among those who make the media that mediates the experience of others, thus
seeking to elevate herself above the herd, not part of the audience but
behind the scenes, pulling the strings. In doing so, of course she may be
doing no more than living out some role she's internalized from movies, TV,
or other story-telling media.  I can't be of any use to help Paul identify
actual 60s revolutionaries Pynchon might have in mind in his
characterization of Frenesi, but in another sense it seems difficult not to
see her as a stand-in for the Media and its complicity in the events of the
60s.


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