VLVL2 (6) Ones and zeros

[Paul Nightingale]

Ch6 onwards, very little actually happens in VL's here-&-now 'present'
until the end of the novel; the major plot developments (Hector arriving
out of the past, Prairie leaving into the past) have already taken
place. The novel no longer has a protagonist; henceforth the narrative
focuses on the telling of stories to characters whose function, as
listeners, is to expose the narrative as a story (ie a partial account
that betrays the teller's perspective). Any discussion of Frenesi as a
character (ie her character function) must begin here. But what strikes
me as interesting about this chapter, given the shift in direction, is
the way it juxtaposes different kinds of narrative and the way different
characters (are called upon to) function differently within those
different narratives.

As did earlier chapters, Ch6 has to begin again after being
'sidetracked' by flashback scenes: on 68 Frenesi drinks coffee, and then
(82) the chapter begins again when she watches TV. Yet the flashbacks
that separate these moments differ from those in earlier chapters by
focusing on a genealogical account of the relationship between
characters and history (the 1930s, WW2). Frenesi might begin by thinking
about the daughter she has never known, and then about Flash and Brock
Vond; structurally, this is similar to the kind of flashback found in
earlier chapters. But then the text signals VL's concern with the
distaff side by prioritising, as narrative agents, Frenesi's mother
Sasha and her grandmother Eula, thereby underscoring (and rehearsing)
the key role that Prairie will play. One consequence of Zoyd's
'removal', then, is the 'liberation' of the narrative: there is no
longer a (masculinist?) hierarchy of narrative discourses that would
prioritise Zoyd's (or any single character's) agency and, eg,
marginalise history/politics.

Furthermore, in a sequence of retrospective accounts, endless "patterns
of ones and zeros" (90), the narrative is now complicated (ie disturbed,
disrupted) by frequent inserts from characters listening to the story
being told: the reader can never be caught up in the illusion that such
retrospective accounts are free of perspective. Perhaps this helps us
make sense of what Tim has called the "moral ambiguity that surrounds
most of the major characters": the narrative refuses to allow readers a
position from which to judge.