VLVL(11) Frenesi completes the selling of her soul

[Toby G Levy]

I sent this out yesterday, but I see that I mistakenly sent it to my
college son.  He must have been too busy "studying" to tell me of my
mistake.

Concluding the summary of chapter 11...

As Vond and Frenesi whiled away the afternoon drinking wine, Vond
hammered away at Frenesi wearing away the last bit of resistance she had
against being the insider who would bring down the People's Republic of
Rock and Roll.

Frenesi complained "Remember handing me all that shit in your office
till I agreed to send in a written report? You said then there wouldn't
be anything more."  But Vond just ignored her complaints and pressed on.

Outside the storm was causing a violent light show across the sky.
Frenesi watched in fascination as she saw the funnel cone of a tornado
sweep by. Vond put his forearm over his eyes and refused to look.
Another intimation of his vampire characteristics.

Vond referred to Weed Atman as "the key log, pull him and you break up
the structure." and Pynchon pursues the image after the quote marks
close, saying that the logs would float down the river to the sawmill.
One's thoughts necessarily turn to the picture on the dust jacket of the
first edition of Vineland.

Vond felt that Weed "was the only one innocent enough, without hidden
plans, with no ambitions beyond surmounting what the day brought each
time around, he just went lurching happily into his new identity of man
of action, embracing it as only an abstract thinker would...enjoying the
unqualified trust of all who came inside his radius."

At last Frenesi acknowledges to herself that she "could allow herself to
do what Brock wanted to do."  What this is, specifically, is not
explained until the next chapter, but it is nothing less than arranging
for the death of Weed Atman, a man she has been intimate with, a man she
admires in some respect. She tells herself that she will do it "because
she lost too much control, time was rushing all around her, these were
rapids, and as far ahead as she could see, it looked like Brock's
stretch of the river..." In other words she wanted to be on the winning
side.  So much for her trade-union upbringing.  So much for her
revolutionary political views. So much for her friends and allies.

She looked on her duty as pawn in Vond's game as "another stage, like
sex, children, surgery, further into adulthood perilous and real, into
the secret that life is soldiering, that soldiering includes death, that
those soldiered for, not yet and often never in on the secret, are
always, at every age, children."  This excuse that she comes up with,
that it's just part of growing up, is despicably ridiculous. Her
"secret" (growing up involves causing others to die) lines up
nicely with Vond's "secret" earlier in the chapter ("power in
the world" has to do with forcing people to do things they did not
want to do).

The chapter ends with Vond falling asleep and Frenesi staring at him,
feeling great love for him.  She bends over him to whisper her heart's
thoughts and suddenly realizes that, like a vampire, Vond has been
sleeping with his eyes open.  Frenesi screams and Vond laughs.  I
imagine it's a laugh akin to Bela Lugosi's hideous cackle.


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