Vineland

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 04/03/2006:

> [...] Frenesi dreamed of a mysterious people's oneness, drawing 
> together toward the best chances of light, achieved once or twice that 
> she'd seen in the street, in short, timeless bursts, all paths, human 
> and projectile, true, the people in a single presence, the police 
> likewise simple as a moving blade -- and individuals who in meetings 
> might only bore or be pains in the ass here suddenly being seen to 
> transcend, almost beyond will to move smoothly between baton and 
> victim, to take the blow instead, to lie down on the tracks as the 
> iron rolled in or look into the gun muzzle and maintain the power of 
> speech -- there was no telling, in those days, who might unexpectedly 
> change this way, or when. Some were in it, in fact, secretly for the 
> possibilities of finding just such moments. (117-8)

It's probably worth quoting the passage in full, as it's one which gets 
cited alot as being central to the concerns of the novel (e.g., 
Berger's "Cultural Trauma and the Timeless Burst" essay). Frenesi's 
enthusiasm for violence and martyrdom here is a little bit creepy, 
reducing the conduct and whole idea of social protest to an 
abstraction. It's almost a fascist vision in itself (think Italian 
Futurism).

Note the way that Pynchon distances himself from many of the '60s 
protesters ("Some were in it ... ") as he also does in the SL Intro; 
and then DL goes on to admit that she's only really into it for "the 
asskicking", which seems a much more honest and self-aware response in 
the context than either Frenesi's visionary nonsense or the "some" who 
were "secretly" in it for the adrenaline rush. While readers might not 
be sure whether or not they "like" Frenesi, I think it's certain enough 
that we do like DL. And it's Pynchon who's engineering these responses 
to his central characters.

I think Frenesi's character is developed enough: the chapter where 
she's living off a government protection handout with Flash, and the 
chapters dealing with her time in 24fps and affair with Brock, leading 
up to her facilitating Weed's murder, and then the birth of Prairie, 
and finally her escape from the reeducation camp and her break with 
Brock, show us a very complex personality. There's no "Stockholm 
Syndrome" about it -- along every step of the way she's fully aware of 
what she's doing. She's entirely a free agent when she decides to run 
with her sexual instincts with Brock, later trying to rationalise it 
away to herself as some hereditary uniform fetish (note that Brock 
doesn't even wear a uniform). But I think it's precisely because of 
this depth of characterisation that we do feel sympathy towards 
Frenesi, as being human, conflicted, unable to resist her sexual urges, 
her post-partum depression, racked by guilt and self-loathing and yet 
still carrying on with the betrayals of everyone around her. She's at 
least as sympathetic as Zoyd, probably more so in parts (especially 
when he stalks her all the way to Hawaii, and actually makes up her 
mind for her to go back to Brock one more time.)

We've been through it before, I know, but Pynchon's depiction of the 
24fps crew is where his satiric caricatures are at their most acerbic. 
They're deliberately depicted as a bunch of nitwits, which, for 
whatever reasons, quite a few readers seem to want to gloss over.

best