Vineland

[Michael Bailey]

On 3/5/06, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

yeah, but I've friends who could kick my ass easily, and that's part
of the understanding between us.  Teasing from them always has that
undercurrent
-- affection, some of it based on a naivete that the non-asskicker has
to express because the asskicker is hungry for it, and will pay for it
by refraining from violence though they will never admit to being
converted over to idealism

anyway, that's my reading of the dynamic, admittedly more flattering to Frenesi

> > 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.
>

maybe not, but I love that line...

and it does play in my reading of the asskicker/non-asskicker dynamic,
ie a glimpse of a "Pacific" DL/Moody after climbing to the peak of
this interaction, waving the psychedelic burger, listening to Country
Joe and the Fish, Frenesi using her attributes to winsomely win DL
(and, yes, ok, taken by DL's physical competence in the real world),
displaying her (and ok maybe it's insufficient and immature, but -
like Linus's pumpkin patch - not insincere) vision of the glimpses of
nobility she's trying to catch, the high points of the whole Movement
community (with all its abuses and mistakes - they are at least as
admirable as the military-industrial complex (which I admit to
admiring too, and trying to grok its vision which also ends in peace
as a goal - for whomever's left - but that's a proviso not absent from
Movement vision statements either, sadly)) -anyway, it's almost as if
DL "sees the light" or the sunlight catches her face, transforming it

And then Frenesi is like old Balboa the explorer, traveling the
isthmus of getting to know DL...and vouchsafed this vision which ties
DL back into her family (Frenesi's family is huge, interlocking,
self-aware, but DL basically relates back to just her parents and the
Army/Martial Arts communities
the only reunion she gets is just to have that much-later
heart-to-heart with her mom, but by virtue of the friendship (cemented
by this glimpse of her pacific side)she gets included in Frenesi's
extended family, vicariously sharing in the reunion that the book
builds toward

-- although in many cases the family interactions are like those in
the place where Van Meter lives, which deals with population density
by bickering and cooking


> > " --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.
>

yeah, the book doesn't demand it be used; but then as we were talking
about a few months ago, within reasonable limits there are varieties
of interpretation possible, given a text;
I don't think the buildup you've elicited from me by deprecating the
book is unwarranted. I'm not confident enough in my critical chops to
delineate the dividing line between my pleasure in reading and the
actual inbuilt greatness of the book - though I will go on record as
doubting that Mr Pynchon would use an image (or trope, or word) as
"just part of (a) segue"


> > "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.
>

okay, that makes sense.  Thanks!
>
>


--
"Acceptance, forgiveness, love - now that's a philosophy of life!"
-Woody Allen, as Broadway Danny Rose