Vineland Questions

[Tim S.]

P-Listers ---

I had a discussion with some friends this weekend about _Vineland_, and
a couple of questions arose that I'd like to bounce off of you folks,
seeing as you are the resident Pynchon scholars and all:

1.  Throughout the novel, Takeshi's dialogue is punctuated by long
dashes, a'la Emily Dickinson.  Could this be Pynchon's way of trying to
reproduce on the written page the badly synchronized dubbing of Japanese
films (i.e. mouth movements that never match the words that we hear)?

2.  The recurring image of Frenesi's camera / lens is often offset by
the repeated image of Brock's gun / penis.  Although BV's gun / penis
are often described in typically "penetrating" and intrusive terms,
Fresesi's camera (or its lens), in contrast, has a vaginal quality, as
it *receives* the outside images, a "gathering in" (195) of that which
makes up the subject of the 24fps documentaries. Also, when we read
that,

      "[a]t some point Prairie understood that the person behind the
camera most of the time
      really was her mother, and that if she kept her mind empty she
could absorb,
      conditionally become, Frenesi, share her eyes, feel, when the
frame shook with fatigue
      or fear or nausea, Frenesi's whole body there" (199),

there is a feminine sense of reception, absorption, sharing, gathering
--- centered on the camera --- (albeit on Prairie's part) that contrasts
with the "penetrating" and "controlling" images given to Brock's sidearm
/ member.  Thoughts?

3.  What are your interpretations of the Dream of the Gentle Flood
(256)?  Could the Gentle Flood represent the Tube (with Frenesi the
dreamer soothingly watching the scene before her, aware of the
time-lapse and "wonderful song" throughout)?  Does it represent the
American Dream (with it's sense of false security and ultimate loss)?
It's such an enigmatic passage, like Melville's "Try-Works" chapter in
_Moby-Dick_, that it seems to defy any solid interpretation for this
reader (of course, it coulda just been the wine I was drinking). What do
you make of it?

Thanks in advance for your responses to these questions!

Tim S.