VLVL (6) Working for the Man

[Paul Nightingale]

>From jbor:
> 
> It might be worthwhile considering the list Pynchon compiles of those
> "independent contractors" who, like both Frenesi and Zoyd, have been on
> the
> government payroll since the end of the '60s or so:
> 
>     There were Long Bihn Jail alumni, old grand-jury semipros,
>     collectors of loans and ladies on strings who'd been persuaded
>     to help entrap soon-to-be ex-customers, snitches with photographic
>     memories, virgins to the act of murder, check bouncers, coke
>     snorters and ass grabbers, each with more than ample reason to
>     seek the shadow of the federal wing, and some, with luck, able to
>     reach its embrace and shelter. (87.5)
> 
> "Long Binh Jail" evokes both the Vietnam War and LBJ, and perhaps "RC" or
> Blood.

Well, I suppose it might be worthwhile considering Pynchon's text (rather
than jbor's doctored version) in context.

Long Binh Jail was a US military jail. You might argue that any prison
system is a product of society; certainly Long Binh was a product of the US
presence in Vietnam. Interesting, therefore, that Pynchon's list should
start here.

> Frenesi is more or less one of those "ladies on strings", a
> "snitch"
> with a "photographic" specialty, if not memory.

What exactly does this description ("more or less") of Frenesi mean? What
happened to the rest of the "ladies on strings" clause?

> And, "virgins to the act
> of
> murder" is an echo of Zoyd's protestation of innocence back in Ch. 1 (and
> he
> is, as we've seen, a "check bouncer", which is the category immediately
> following).
>
 
In Ch1, the text says: "Hector had been trying over and over for years to
develop him as a resource, and so far--technically--Zoyd had hung on to his
virginity. But the li'l fucker would not quit" (12). The text therefore
speaks on behalf of Zoyd, although certainly it shares his pov. And as I
argued previously, Hector's frustration in the Ch3 flashback (24-25)
indicates that he agrees.

> I wonder what the implied author's attitude to this motley collection of
> thugs and thieves might be?
> 

It might be interesting to speculate as to what "virgins to the act of
murder" actually does mean, rather than trying to turn Zoyd, not for the
first time, into a member of "this motley collection of thugs and thieves".
What informs the passage as a whole is the technical virginity of the state,
and its agents, for whom "independent contractors" can be forced (strange,
ironic use of "independent" there, don't you think?) to do the dirty work.

Consider, for example, the passage that jbor decided to drop in his haste to
rewrite Pynchon: "... ladies on strings who'd been persuaded to help entrap
soon-to-be ex-customers ..." The passage is carefully constructed to
emphasise coercion.

But what of the context?

The passage in question begins, top of 87, as follows: "He'd brought home a
quickly compiled list, all independent contractors like themselves. Frenesi
got out a couple of frozen, or with the state the fridge was in actually
semithawed, peperoni pizzas, put the oven on to preheat, and made a fast
salad while Flash opened beers and read off the names."

Then after the passage already quoted selectively, a new paragraph
continues: "Or so they must have believed. But now, no longer on the
computer, how safe could any of them be feeling?"

Hence, the immediate context is that of Frenesi's domestic situation and the
helplessness of the "motley collection" of (technically?) non-persons. If
they can be cast adrift so easily, they can't be all that important, and Ch6
offers a detailed account of Frenesi's 'downmarket' lifestyle: her status
isn't really that of someone who is benefiting from crime. As a snitch she
is exploited just as much as she is working at the mall.

More broadly, the chapter, having introduced Frenesi, has adopted flashbacks
that differ significantly to those in previous chapters. I've already
suggested that the presence of such flashbacks in this particular chapter is
structurally significant. The Ch6 flashbacks emphasise the brutality of the
Employers' Association, against whom the law is (or chooses to be) helpless
(75); and that's before references to the Pinkertons (76) and "the
anticommunist terror" (81-82) as sponsored by the state. Hence the first
extended account of Frenesi's life after Zoyd is juxtaposed to the text's
first detailed account of labour history and class conflict, which is the
purpose of the chapter as a whole.