VLVL(4)(g) Behind a 409 with James Dean and Dick Dale

[Vincent A. Maeder]

	"behind a 409..."  (VL. Ch. 4, p.37) Chevrolet "W" motor
produced in 1961 through 1966, stuffed into the Impala SS 409.
http://selectmotors.net/1963-impala-ss-409.htm  This paragraph ushers in
the death-wish culture or surfers and car drivers.  Mr. Wheeler's band,
The Corvairs, brings to light another death-wish in the form of the
dangerous and ill-handling Corvairs of Ralph Nader infamy that launched
a Plaintiffs' Attorney Industry as well as Ralph Nader's career--Unsafe
at Any Speed--and a classic car revolution of the 1960's.  That the last
clause of the last sentence of this paragraph could be read as the
indictment of the Corvair itself with it's "sudden midnight farewells"
usually played out on long country curves, is without a doubt a tip of
Mr. Pynchon's hat to his paranoia of the Conspiracy.  

	The Corvair was Chevrolet's answer to the cheap Volkswagens
(there's a GR reference perhaps) that were cutting into Chevrolet's
sales.  The Corvair, in production from 1960 to 1969, shows Mr.
Pynchon's penchant for 1960's classic cars and Chevrolet (especially
when combined with the 409 reference).  The phrases "rode the momentum
through the years of the auto industry's will" and "death entered into
their recreation more than into the surfer's" demonstrates a fascination
in Mr. Pynchon's life for risk-taking.  This theme is developed further
in the following paragraph.

	"After work, unable to sleep, the Corvairs liked to go out and
play motorhead valley roulette in the tule fogs."  (VL, Ch. 4, p. 37)
Tule land is low swampy marsh land found in Northern California.  "Low,
swampy land is tules or tule land in the parlance of northern
California. When the Spanish colonized Mexico and Central America, they
borrowed from the native inhabitants the Nahuatl word tollin, "bulrush."
The English-speaking settlers of the West in turn borrowed the Spanish
word tule to refer to certain varieties of bulrushes native to
California. Eventually the meaning of the word was extended to the
marshy land where the bulrushes grew."  The American HeritageR
Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright C 1992 by
Houghton Mifflin Company.  

	But more than anything this paragraph is reminiscent of some
James Dean movie moment.  "Mr. Dean was issued a speeding ticket only
two hours and fifteen minutes before his fatal accident.  The Eagles
penned a lyric about him that went: 'Too fast to live, too young to
die.'  The famous Failure Analysis Associates, from Menlo Park,
California, re-constructed and re-created all details of the accident at
the same approximate time on September 30th, and have concluded that
James Dean was travelling 55 to 56 m.p.h. when the fateful accident
occured, thereby proving he had not been speeding, as rumor had it."
http://www.imdb.com/Bio?Dean,%20James  It wasn't a Corvair he was in
when Mr. Turnupseed (can I have a character name check, please?) killed
James Dean; it was a Porsche Spyder.  Yet, resonances abound; Mr. Dean
was on his way to northern California to participate in an auto race
upon his death.  A motorhead who will live forever.

	"Zoyd had grown up in the San Joaquin..."  (VL, Ch. 4, p. 37)
The resonances continue here.  San Joaquin in north central California
might have been on Mr. Dean's route to Salinas on that fateful day.
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." --James
Dean.  The popularity of James Dean with his cultic energy, the onset of
beat poetry, a revolution was in the offing while that
Conspiracy--always thinking of our future like some oedipal father
fearful of its own death and castration--attempted to remove that
sub-culture hero in a vain effort to stem the revolution, merely
creating a martyr and fueling a generation of beats, revolutionaries and
other misfits who transformed the energy into their own revolution.

	Coming out of this energy, Dick Dale with surfadelic music,
leading in Los Angeles where others would only vaguely tread, the like
of the Beach Boys or the Ventures, with "'grudge run,' as Dick Dale
might say..."  (VL, Ch. 4, p. 37)  Indeed, Mr. Dale did say this in his
1960's classic hit.  Dick Dale was THE man who created surf music with
releases spanning 1959 to present along with the famous resurrection via
Pulp Fiction.  

	"Dick Dale and his group the Del-Tones never achieved great
national fame, but from 1961 through at least 1963 they may have been
the hottest act in the whole L.A. area. They can be said to have
furnished the soundtrack for the southern California lifestyle and its
cultural fixations such as surfing, hot rodding and hanging out at the
beach as much as possible. They even furnished some of the actual
soundtracks for the Annette Funicello-Frankie Avalon beach movies.

	"More than half of [Greatest Hits - Dick Dale and his Del Tones]
tracks are instrumentals, and these showcase Dale's surf guitar at its
best. Truth be told, they are a tad repetitive. There are differences,
of course. "Surfing Drums" has a run in it that sounds like it was taken
from the song, "Tequila." "The Wedge" provides one of the best displays
of the cascading-sound aspect of surf music. "Mr. Eliminator" is one of
my favorite instrumentals, but it is over too soon at 1 minute, 59
seconds. 

	"The vocal cuts are a varied lot.  "Grudge Run" is a drag racing
set-piece, reprising a showdown between the singer and "some guy out of
state in a Ferrari." "Peppermint Man" has something of an R&B tinge. I
particularly like Dale's version of the folk tune, "Sloop John B," which
was made famous by The Beach Boys. For his version, Dale trills his
"R's" in what I suppose to be an attempt at a Caribbean accent: I feel
so br-r-r-eak up, I want to go home. Fake or not, it's an interesting
little flourish. . . . If you like fast guitar playing and the wild,
thundering runs of West Coast surf music, you'll love to hear Dick Dale
play, too."
http://www.epinions.com/musc-review-491F-298517BF-3A045855-prod3