VLVL The deal

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 10:50 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL The deal

> > "Before he was to be cut loose, Zoyd had had to stand between
> > two marshals (*.*) unobserved in the afternoon shade (...)."
>
> Well, if you leave out the part about one of them being "his assailant,
> Ron, unobserved in the afternoon shade", sure thing I guess.

Of course it's absolutely sure if you leave out "his assailant, Ron".

>May as well write
> your own version of the book, leave out whichever bits you don't like

I did not leave out any bit of the text. I just demonstrated what the main
sentence and what the subordinate clause are. The sentence makes sense
without the "Ron"-part.

I'm not writing my "own version" of the book and I'm not accusing you of
doing so. I just have a different opinion and argued for that succesfully.

> (such
> as, say, the bit where Frenesi is in the PREP office without any pants on
> trying to cover for Brock by telling DL that he left "hours ago" 256) --

This has nothing to do with the part we're talking about.

> nothing particularly wrong with that approach to reading a text. It's
>called revisionism, and it does get a good workout round here.
>

 I'm trying to get out of the text what's in it and I don't consider my
"approach" as revisionism.

> The sort of grammatical ambiguity being argued for, which could have been
> avoided by placing the subordinate clause after the word "marshals", is
> indeed sloppy writing. Deliberate semantic ambiguity is a different thing
> entirely.

Seems as if you are just calling "sloppy writing" what you don't like. I
don't think that Pynchon wanted to be deliberately ambiguous here.

>
> And why would Brock want to hide Zoyd's presence from Frenesi?

Because he looks "terrible" (304.9) after being beaten up. It's only
logical that Brock doesn't want her to see that, isn't it?

> Why is Frenesi even there at the gaol? Why is she smiling?
>

Because she naively believes that she's reached her goal, getting Brock.

> > Speculation without any textual evidence. Where did you get
> > the information that Frenesi's aware of the real deal?
>
> pp. 68-70
>
> Flash "might have been crazy enough to think she was somehow trying to
> rewrite all their history, being known to say things like: 'Aw, it was a
> judgment call, hon. Say you'd've tried to stay away, could've been even
> worse,' eyebrows up and cocked in a way he knew women read as sincere,
> 'old Brock come after you then no matter where you took her, and --'
> a sour grin, 'ka-pow!'"
>
> Frenesi doesn't ever try to contact Prairie, she knows not to, because she
> was in on the deal from the beginning.
>
> best

That pp. 68-70 part (the danger of beong shot) gives a pretty good argument
for Frenesi *not* to try to contact her child. So no reason for her to play
an active role of the deal. She's just the obscure object of desire.

To put it negatively: one could say that Zoyd has "sold" Frenesi to Brock
for keeping his freedom and his daughter. Therefor Brock says that orwellian
sentence: "she'd have done the same to you." (301) It's what Brock is
telling Zoyd; the way the deal is handled is not necessarily what Frenesi
wants. I think at this point of the story she's relatively unaware of what
is really going on, of what Brock's doing to Zoyd.

Otto