Vineland

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 06/03/2006:

> "I couldn't help teasing you..."" - ie, not the
> most benevolent or mature adult herself

I read this as quite tender, a lover's teasing, rather than something 
harsh or malicious.

> but after Frenesi's youthful epiphany, what happens to DL?: "...DL was
> smiling lopsidedly to herself.  Backlit by the last of the sun,
> Frenesi in dazed witness, her face had become possessed by that of a
> young man, distant, surmised" - like from a peak in Darien? -

Nice, but I don't think that Keats is an actual point of reference here.

> " --Moody Chastain, her father" (118) -- why at this moment does DL's 
> face
> become Moody's face? Moody isn't the most mature or benevolent adult
> either

There's lots of stuff in the novel about heredity -- both physical 
features and psychological characteristics, even Brock's ideas on 
phrenology factor in (272-3) -- enough to think of it as a theme. But I 
think here it's basically just part of the segue into DL's backstory, 
though there is definitely an insinuation that DL has inherited her 
penchant for "asskicking" from her violent father.

> "What viewer could believe in the war, the system, the countless lies
> about American freedom, looking into these mug shots of the bought and
> sold?"
> then gets complex and weird
> "Hearing the synchronized voices repeat the same formulas, evasive,
> affectless, cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of
> what they would never get to collect on" (195) ---
> who are we talking about here, what promises, has our rhetoric run 
> away from us?

I think the "they" (both) in the last sentence has to be the owners of 
the voices, i.e the "bought and sold" who are mouthing the "countless 
lies" on the tv -- politicians primarily, I guess. They have sold out 
on whatever integrity they once had ("whatever they had once been") by 
the prospect of wealth and power (i.e. the "promises" by which they had 
been "bought and sold"). However, Frenesi is saying that they will 
"never get to collect" on those promises, because the revolution will 
prevail ("too many of us are learning to pay attention").

It's complex, but not altogether incomprehensible.

best