VL: the Deal

[pynchonoid]

Hector is Vond's enforcer - colleagues, birds of a
feather, quite a recommendation.   It's corrupt Hector
who plants the marijuana monolith in Zoyd's apartment
to try to force Zoyd to work for him as an informer
(p. 294) (another dirty deed for Vond, which Hector
appears to enjoy immensely) -- Hector has been
threatening and manipulating Zoyd from the start, up
to and continuing with the deal to monitor him by
keeping him on the disability rolls. Hector also
threatens to turn 2 oz of pot into "tons" p. 51) and
tries to abduct Zoyd's daughter (p. 50) -- just part
of the never-ending string of good deeds Hector does
in this novel. Charming guy - friends like that you
don't need enemies.  Zoyd's got it right when he tells
Prairie, re Hector, "his business is lying." (p. 50) 


--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:

> > Vineland, p. 304:
> > [...] Right, which is where the mental disability
> > arrangement came in. "Just a way for us to know
> where
> > you are," Hector had explained, "long as you're
> > picking up the checks, nobody'll bother you--but
> if
> > you stop, even one time, the alarm goes off and we
> > know you're tryin' to skip."[...]
> 
> In fact, Hector is merely the messenger here,
> following orders in what he
> perceptively recognises is only an "estupidass
> marriage-counsellor errand"
> (295) anyway. And, as well as ensuring that Prairie
> is looked after when
> Zoyd is arrested (295), 

Another explicit deal, for which Hector demands a
favor in return - trying to force  Zoyd to submit by
threatening to take away the baby.  Hardly a Good
Samaritan.

> The deal had actually been orchestrated by Brock to
> keep Frenesi away from

And BV couldn't carry it out without Hector's willing,
gleeful assistance.

>Frenesi, of course, is still
> sleeping with Brock at
> this point, as she had been (literally and
> symbolically) for some time. Her
> "steadfastly smiling" presence at the gaol when Zoyd
> is released (304), as
> well as the fact that the chapter opens with her
> goading Brock into a rage
> with the information that she has a child with Zoyd
> (294), intimates that
> she is the one who has manipulated this situation.
> Thus, this "arrangement"
> through which Zoyd and Prairie will be supported by
> the state is *her*
> legacy to the daughter she abandoned. 

Just can't get past that "blame the victim" rhetoric,
can you? Pynchon paints Frenesi as a victim all the
way -- victim of childhood and cultural conditioning,
of BV's manipulation and abuse, of her own selfish
indulgences over which she apparently has no control
(as Hector seems to be unable to control his Tubal
obsessions and fantasies).  Pynchon's sympathies for
Frenesi can be seen clearly when he returns her to a
loving family at the end of the novel.

>The chapter
> ends with the information
> that, over the years as Zoyd and Prairie established
> themselves in Vineland,
> the "mental disability checks ... arrived faithfully
> as the moon" (321).

And Hector's threat stays in place, as surely as the
sun rises each morning.

> 
> There is a deeper sub-text in all this too, of how
> the counterculture
> gradually succumbed, 

Pounded down pretty well, too, by the powers-that-be.

>or was lured by fame and
> fortune, to the indignity of
> becoming a comic self-parody (or worse, N.B. that
> the reference to Tiny Tim
> and Wild Man Fischer is counterpoised by mention of
> Charles Manson 309) and
> how it lost any of the political puissance it might
> once have aspired to as
> a result 

Debatable.  A Vietnam war hero-turned-war-protester is
about to become President.  And 60s counterculture
values permeate US society  -- not the Bushite Jesus
freaks of course -- in countless ways that demonstrate
how Zoyd and his real-world cohorts have prevailed.
(Well, that may be a bit of a stretch, given the
neofascist turn under Bush, but he's on the ropes; but
the 60s rebels have transformed US society in ways
that many credible observers and historians consider
revolutionary, and positive.)

>-- how it allowed itself to become framed
> by the media and the
> Establishment as, what Zoyd is, 

Concrete actions taken by Nixon, Reagan/Bush and the
rest of "criminally insane" leadership play a huge
role in this, too, certainly.  That's the part you
omit every time you sing this tune.  And you don't
seem to have a clue about -- or won't acknowledge --
the way the 60s counterculture used clowning as a
calculated tactic in its political-cultural war with
the Establishment; you don't seem to get Tiny Tim's
act, etiher.

>some crazed and
> impotent transvestite hippie
> wielding a chainsaw, leaping through windows and
> scaring the kiddies.

Hardly. Zoyd doesn't scare anybody, not even the
"kiddies" (no more than a Saturday morning TV cartoon)
he's been doing this so long even the local TV news
reports on his annual performance, and he's only doing
what he's been forced to do in order to keep Hector
and Vond from carrying out their threats. Under stress
and duress, protecting his family. No lack of moral
fiber there.

=====
http://pynchonoid.org
"everything connects"


		
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