VLVL Prairie and DL

[jbor]

>> It's interesting that DL realises or assumes that everyone would have been
>> lying to Prairie about why Frenesi went away. Zoyd and Sasha told Prairie
>> that Frenesi had gone "underground". DL thinks to herself: "That's the story
>> DL should have known they'd tell the kid." (101.27) But DL herself is also
>> "in a pickle" (100.34). She realises that "[w]hatever story she told this
>> kid must not, maybe never, be the story she knew." (101.1) And so she
>> stalls, pretends she doesn't know what happened, and eventually defers the
>> onus onto Takeshi.

on 15/10/03 1:28 PM, Michael Joseph at mjoseph at rci.rutgers.edu wrote:

> I think this is a bit of a misreading of this particular scene and the
> dynamic between DL and Prairie. DL indeed says, "you ought to at least
> have Takeshi's input on this" (103), but surely not to unencumber herself
> of Prairie's education or company. It seems so clear that she is tempting
> Prairie--just as Pynchon is tempting the reader--with what we all might
> imagine the strangely inventive Takeshi might come up with. DL clearly
> wants Prairie to accompany her, although she cannot guess what Prairie
> truly wants. The question "Can he find my mom?" (100) is a hard one, but
> DL commits herself to answering it. She and Prairie clink glasses to
> "Frenesi Gates." Where's the deferral?

I was in a bit of a rush this a.m. and may not have expressed myself as
clearly as I'd like, but I certainly didn't mean to imply that I thought
that DL wanted to disencumber herself of Prairie's company.

On the other hand, that DL is extremely reluctant to tell Prairie "the
story" about Frenesi -- and ultimately doesn't -- is a point made fairly
emphatically throughout the scene. See:

100.10-16

100.34-101.8

101.27-29

102.3-4

102.7-9

103.28-9

I think it's pretty clear that DL knows what Prairie wants. She wants to
know the truth about her mom. That's why DL realises she is "in a pickle".
So she equivocates, she "temporizes" (i.e. avoids the subject, talks about
how long it's been, how "everybody made up a different story" etc, and
compare DL's comments at 101.2-6 with Sasha's at 81.10-24), and, eventually,
after telling Prairie not one thing about Frenesi, she "stare[s] down at her
feet, like an amateur tap dancer."

best