VLVL Frenesi

[jbor]

Toby:
 
> 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.

But note also how Brock says to her, "I didn't think you'd ever get into it
with Atman, either." (216.13)

It seems that Frenesi's affair with Weed wasn't ever a part of Brock's
agenda, and that a lot of his animosity and taunting of her might be down to
a different sort of green-eyed monster: jealousy.

On Frenesi's side, she has a deep desire to "redeem even Brock", and this is
described "as about the only way she knew how to use the word *love* any
more". (216-7)

It's not so much that Frenesi wants to be on "the winning side", she wants
to try and use her influence over Brock to make him see "the light", to
change him (she believes he will "allow her to lead him stumbling out into
light that she imagined as sun plus sky, with an 85 filter in, returning him
to the man he should have grown into" (216-7). All the stuff about the
"rapids" and "Brock's stretch of the river" up ahead is her recognition that
Brock is going to succeed, and that Weed and PR3 are going to fail. She's
naive enough to think that she can "redeem even Brock" and perhaps influence
the inevitable outcomes, both personal and political.
  
> 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.

This isn't quite right: "She understood as clearly as she could allow
herself to what Brock wanted her to do, understood at last, dismally, that
she might even do it .... " (216.16) The text depicts Frenesi battling with
her own conscience -- as well as battling it out verbally with Brock -- and
holding onto a vain hope that she can "redeem" this man she loves.

I actually find Frenesi at her most pathetic, if not also sympathetic, in
this scene.

Thanks for your notes and comments, Toby.

best


> 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.