AtDTdA: (9) 266-267

[Jasper]

The link to p. 190 is obviously important.  The end of the paragraph 
(middle of the page) has Webb thinking about "the black apocalyptic sky" 
and the "lightning that never stopped", and ends with: "He had got 
something down his spine that he thought meant he was about to be hit by 
lightning."  If Webb is the Tarocchi Tower, then Lake is one of the 
people falling from it.  (Or is she the lightning?  Or whatever.)  And 
while she didn't submit to her father (her first male figure of power as 
you put it) she now submits to her husband, which seems to be an effect 
of defying her father, of "entering the realm of air."

Strange though that Lake comes to be identified with air (as Frank -- I 
forget where -- is identified with earth).

Tore Rye Andersen wrote:
> Jasper admiringly quoted:
>
> "At the moment of surrendering, she found herself wishing only to become
> the wind. To feel herself refined to an edge, an invisible edge of
> unknown length, to enter the realm of air forever in motion over the
> broken land. Child of the storm."
>
> - and reflected on Lake being described as a "Child of the storm".
>
> The first thing I thought of when reading that moniker (introduced by 
> Webb on p. 190) were a couple of significant scenes in Vineland. The 
> first scene occurs in a suite at the Imperial in Tokyo, just after 
> Ralph Wayvone has bought DL at an auction (VL, 137-38), and the second 
> episode takes place in another hotel room, between two different 
> people, namely Brock and Frenesi (VL, 212-15). The scenes are in 
> effect mirror images of each other (just as DL and Frenesi are doubles 
> -- The theme of mirrors/doubles/twins is almost as important in VL as 
> in AtD): In both scenes a woman sells her services (and in effect 
> herself) to a male figure of power, and in both scenes, a storm is 
> raging outside the window, and Pynchon describes these storms in 
> lavish and scary detail (see VL, 138, 212, 215):
>
> Here is DL's storm:
>
> "A lightning storm had appeared far out to sea and now, behind them 
> out the window, was advancing on the city, taking brightly crazed 
> shots all along the horizon." (138)
>
> And here's Frenesi's:
>
> "...weather maps kept breaking in with updates on a number of storm 
> cells moving out in the landscape, surrounding the city. Ghostly 
> predigital radar images appeared, of gray mother storms giving birth 
> from their righ-hand sides to little hook-shaped echoes that grew, and 
> detached, to glide off on their own as murderous young tornadoes. 
> Weather commentators tried to maintain the tradition of wackiness the 
> job is known for, but could not keep out of the proceedings an element 
> of surrender, as if before some first hard intelligence of the advent 
> of an agent of rapture. Outside, from a remote camera, the sky was the 
> underside of a beast, countless gray-black udder shapes crawling in in 
> front of a squall line, behind it something distantly roaring, 
> dangling immense stings veined with lightning, sweeping, 
> destroying....She felt electrically excited" (212)
>
> - and it goes on:
>
> "Outside, beyond the dense rubberized drapes, now a solid black 
> rectangle rim-lit with a least glimmer of failed daylight, was the 
> storm, the Event. Just when she thought they were nestled safe in the 
> center of America - here were sounds in the air they couldn't have 
> imagined [...] At the sight of the black rolling clouds she caught her 
> breath - she'd never seen a sky like this on Earth, not even with the 
> help of LSD [and the descriptions continues]" (215)
>
> Both DL and Frenesi make some extremely bad choices here: they sell 
> their souls to the wrong men, with the storm as a background. Note, 
> furthermore, how the Storm in the second quote is described as some 
> female Beast (udders and all), giving birth. To what? To Children of 
> the Storm, naturally, to DL, to Frenesi, and to Lake (who seems to 
> share many characteristics with the Frenesi character).
>
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