VLVL concluding Chapter 7

[Michael Joseph]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003, jbor wrote:

> >>>>>> It's pretty straightforward that Prairie is asking for information and
> >>>>>> help
> >>>>>> in finding (physically and metaphorically) Frenesi. And it's immediately
> >>>>>> followed by DL realising she's "in a pickle", acknowledging Takeshi's
> >>>>>> fallibility,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The text suggests that DL feels that she is in a pickle, not because of
> >>>>> Takeshi's "fallibility" (your intervention), but because of his
> >>>>> prowess--"she was still finding out what he could do" (100). Pynchon is so
> >>>>> obviously implying Takeshi might be capable of doing anything. Why else
> >>>>> rig up his business card as an "amulet"--and why else repeat the term
> >>>>> "amulet"? Surely there are better ways to imply "fallibility"?
> >>>>
> >>>> Years with Takeshi, and she was still finding out what he
> >>>> could do. And couldn't.
> >>>
> >>> Nice try, but clearly a reference to their sexual abstinence, and his
> >>> ability to exert self control.
> >>
> >> Sure it is, Mike.
> >>
> > Knew you'd protest, perhaps on behalf of first-time readers for whom the
> > abstinence issue hadn't been introduced, and who therefore wouldn't be
> > able to react to this nuance. But, fallibility? For fallibility to become
> > an issue, one has either to have started from the point of considering a
> > character infallibile, and we've already seen Takeshi rely upon Zoyd to
> > conceal him from the mysterious sky patrol (never mind the operative
> > assumptions of adult fiction), or to have a text focalized from a naive
> > perspective for whom infallibility is an option, and, surely, DL cannot
> > strike any reader as naive.
>
> Say what? DL has got Prairie's hopes up at the prospect of what Takeshi
> might be able to do to help. The girl's sudden eagerness causes DL to
> reflect:
>
>     Years with Takeshi, and she was still finding out what he
>     could do. And couldn't.
>
> So let me get this straight. In your interpretation DL was "still finding
> out" that she and Takeshi were forbidden to have sex? (Chronic memory loss
> on her part, apparently.) And you're trying to argue that "couldn't" =
> "self-control"?!
>
> Sillier and sillier.

In my interpretation, Vineland is trying to do several things with this
specific passage, and one is, anticipating the sexual taboo placed upon
Takeshi and DL, which readers will learn about later; this happens
subtextually, and within DL's momentary reflection upon Takeshi; the
question of whether takeshi could be of assistance in finding Frenesi
becomes tangential. DL is reflecting, first, quite naturally, since his
"amulet" has brought her to the daughter of a central figure in her life
and significantly recast at a toss her own life, upon Takeshi's potential
for a supererogatory deed--indeed, in the mythic undertext Frenesi is dead
("underground'), and her reconstitution requires a harrowing of the
underworld, so "still finding out what Takeshi could do"  suggests a sober
marveling at a supernatural skill set (quite opposite to appraising
limitation and disappointment, as you alone seem to think)--and then, she
slides (again, quite naturally, I think, and certainly with ample literary
precedent) into a consideration, seditious, irrelevant, to be repressed,
upon his potential as a lover, to which she attaches the negative, which
resonates both with the interdiction of the Sisterhood and with her own
intense ambivalence about sex (again, about which we will find out later).
We are also seeing DL taking the measure of her own ability or resolution,
projected upon Takeshi.

By "Sillier and sillier" I assume you mean I am being illogical, or that I
am using the logic of Wonderland (sidebar: for commentary on Pynchon's
Wonderland see Bev Clarke's book on Pynchon, Nabokov and Lewis
Carroll--one of the supplementary texts V. posited early last summer).
But, I think it's more illogical [sic] to collapse these oppositions
"could/couldn't" into a single statement about Takeshi's fallibility.
Beyond the inarguable point we seem to be arguing--that adult characters
do not discover others are "fallible" (except in comicbooks and children's
books), the meaning you insist upon forces the text into a redundancy.
And, DL of course hasn't been drinking.



Michael