VL-IV 1 Wheel of Fortune, pgs. 11/13/369/370 plain text

[Robin Landseadel]

Resubmitted in the hope it doesn't mess up on the p-list


Zoyd’s annual tranfenistrative action has been taken out from under  
him as mob-man Ralph Jr. [with an assist from forces unmentioned] has  
installed a pane of all-sugar stunt-glass in the Cuke’s front window.  
Zoyd finds out via Hector’s essential act of “badness”, wherein the  
narc picks up a “Glass” shard and chews on it, yelling out “yummy!” en  
Español.  Zoyd’s annual leap through the glass has metastasized into a  
media event just as insane and over-reported as ‘black friday’, at  
least on local TV with plenty of promise for national syndication  
given enough time and luck:

	... you better not fuck up this one Ralph, you know what'll happen."

	"Always kidding, huh. Here, let me show you the window you'll be  
using. Can I have them get you a drink or anything? Oh by the way  
Zoyd, here's an old friend of yours, come all this way to wish you  
luck."

There’s Mob/Cop complicity here, but the subtext here [as much as in  
Gravity’s Rainbow] is Hollywood:

	. . .Production staff murmured into walkie-talkies, technicians could  
be seen through the fateful window, waving light meters and checking  
sound levels outside as Zoyd, breathing steady. . .

Just to underline the Hollywood/TV theme:

. . .At last all was set. Van Meter flashed Mr. Spock's Vulcan hand  
salute. "Ready when you are, Z Dubya!"

Like everything else in this carefully plotted novel, there is a  
mirroring of the theme on the other end of the novel:

. . . Justin found his father and Zoyd in the back of a pickup,  
watching "Say, Jim," a half-hour sitcom based on "Star Trek," in which  
all the actors were black except for the Communications Officer, a  
freckled white redhead named Lieutenant O'Hara. Whenever Spock came on  
the bridge, everybody made Vulcan hand salutes and went around high- 
threeing. . .
VL, 370

“Mr. Spock's Vulcan hand salute” is none other than our good friend,  
the kabbalist hand gesture “Shin”.  And, like Miles tripping over the  
silverware on the deck of the Inconvenience, we stumble over one of  
the best explanations of why a certain set of apocalyptic themes and  
secret hand gestures appear and re-appear in all of Pynchon’s books.  
It turns out to be Mystical Jewish tradition and lives on the same  
block as a bunch of other western mystery traditions. Leonard Nimoy  
explains:

I saw the priestly gentlemen in my congregation that I was attending  
with my family doing this with their hands over the congregation.  
[Nimoy makes the Vulcan greeting sign with his right hand!] I was  
intrigued. I learned later that that was the shape of the letter Shin  
in the Hebrew alphabet and that was the first letter in "Shekhina."  
It's also the first letter in the word "Shaddai," which is the name of  
the almighty. I understood that. But there was one element that I  
didn't understand. My father told me, "Don't look." And I saw the  
whole congregation covering their eyes with their hands or their  
prayer shawls or looking down at the floor.

"The reason you don't look is because the belief is that the Shekhina  
enters the sanctuary to bless the congregation. We're told the light  
of God could be fatal to a human if you saw it. You should not see God  
face-to-face, and Shekhina is God's presence on earth. When she comes  
into the sanctuary the light could be fatal. That's why you cover your  
eyes. I went, "Oh. Wow.”

http://dir.salon.com/story/sex/galleries/2002/09/06/nimoy/index1.html

Thus: Contre-jour.

Note as well that Zoyd is cross-dressing for this annual ritual:

http://tinyurl.com/6ouuef

This experience is fore grounded in the third chapter on being a  
shaman, where the author describes the main shamanic practices, how a  
shaman is chosen (and by whom) and has a detailed look at gender  
issues relating to shamanism. This is actually fairly central to many  
forms of shamanism, as it sometimes (but not always) involves some  
form of transgression of socially defined gender boundaries, either  
through cross-dressing, gendered behaviours, sexuality and so forth.  
His description here also reinforces the fact that there is no “ideal”  
form of shamanism, as it takes on many forms and variations and there  
is no single form that can be said to be the archetype. The following  
chapter continues this theme with a consideration of the differing  
costumes, tools and musical devices that shamans employ in their  
performances. Again there are wide variations but most tools embody  
items that can be said to be useful in the shaman’s ascent or descent  
into the two main spirit worlds.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/blackchip/explore_shamanism.htm

As the spirit world we are about to enter is the spirit world of the  
sixties filtered through film, “The Tube” and a number of other means  
of psychic retrieval accessible during that particular time, it seems  
only right that Zoyd’s foolish leap into the void of the Tube [zero +  
void = Zoyd]:

http://tinyurl.com/5ld4nl

. . . be under the cabalistic sign of the Goddess and via the tools of  
Television. This so much like the Firesign Theater’s “Don’t Crush That  
Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliars”, I can hardly stand it. It’s like Zoyd is  
trying to jump into the Tube and live there. Then again, Zoyd is the  
zero in the deck, the fool card in this particular spread. And just to  
underline the tarot-iness of the passage:

It was like being on "Wheel of Fortune," only here there were no  
genial vibes from any Pat Sajak to find comfort in, no tanned and  
beautiful Vanna White at the corner of his vision to cheer on the  
Wheel, to wish him well, to flip over one by one letters of a message  
he knew he didn't want to read anyway.

This reminds me very much of a similar passage, in a similar place in  
another book by Thomas Pynchon:

What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having  
plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and  
architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps  
her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her  
from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut  
fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand  
how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of  
force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby  
like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is  
everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic,  
what else?
[CoL 49, pgs. 11/12]

The subtext of The Crying of Lot 49 is black magic. The subtext of  
Vineland is Television, filling up the edges of the book like white  
noise or a gas attack. What visits upon Oedipa appears to be a  
successfully milignant spell. What happens to Zoyd appears to be  
altogether more fortuitious. Zoyd being the the fool card, has no  
assingment in this deck, a joker card who presence in the spread is  
entirely dependant upon chance or [if your prefer] synchronicity. Thus  
the Wheel of Fortune:

 From out of hiding comes the Fool, into the sunlight, as if being  
pulled up from some low, dark point on a wheel. It is time for a  
change. Staff in hand, he heads back out into the world, expecting  
nothing. But, strangely, things seem to happen to him as the hours go  
by, good things.

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/basics/wheel.shtml

Karma enters into Vineland’s mix as the Wheel is tilted:

The Wheel of Fortune turns
I go down, demeaned;
another is raised up;
far too proud
sits the king at the summit --
let him fear ruin!
for under the axis we read
about Queen Hecuba

These lines from the 13th-century Carmina Burana capture an irony and  
fatalism that was no doubt strong in the medieval view of the world.  
Fortuna, the fickle and capricious goddess of luck, was no benign  
benefactress, but rather a reminder of the powerlessness of human  
beings at the hands of fate. The Wheel is almost a medieval torture  
instrument, to which we are strapped, forced to endure the humbling  
roller-coaster ride of life.

http://www.tarothermit.com/wheel.htm

Knowing full well that Zoyd’s an alright guy we cheer on the aging  
hippy/musician/sap. Vineland is the “Japanese Insurance Adjustor  
Novel” of lore. The whole novel circles on Karma.

Let’s face it: Fool Card Zoyd has some really interesting karma to  
work out in this book. I know that a novel about a Japanese Insurance  
Adjustor with Godzilla on the side sounds kinda cheesy and late-night- 
TV anyway, but hey you get what you pay for, un-nerstan? This baby was  
in the master plan all along, a counterweight to the nuclear blast of  
Gravity’s Rainbow and the suggestion that we might even have cause for  
hope if we play our cards right:

It was the heart of this gathering meant to honor the bond between  
Eula Becker and Jess Traverse, that lay beneath, defined, and made  
sense of them all, distributed from Marin to Seattle, Coos Bay to  
downtown Butte, choker setters and choppers, dynamiters of fish,  
shingle weavers and street-corner spellbinders, old and beaten at,  
young and brand-new, they all kept an eye on the head of the table,  
where Jess and Eula sat together, each year smaller and more  
transparent, waiting for Jess's annual reading of a passage from  
Emerson he'd found and memorized years ago, quoted in a jailhouse copy  
of The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James. Frail as  
the fog of Vineland, in his carrying, pure voice, Jess reminded them,  
" 'Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed,  
of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the  
tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their  
shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forever more the ponderous equator  
to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or  
be pulverized by the recoil.' " He had a way of delivering it that  
always got them going, and Eula wouldn't take her eyes off him. "And  
if you don't believe Ralph Waldo Emerson," added Jess, "ask Crocker  
'Bud' Scantling," the head of the Lumber Association whose life of  
impunity for arranging to drop the tree on Jess had ended abruptly  
down on 101 not far from here when he'd driven his week-old BMW into  
an oncoming chip truck at a combined speed of about 150. It'd been a  
few years now, but Jess still found it entertaining.
Vl, pg 369

Background music: Charlie Parker, “The Complete Savoy and Dial studio  
recordings, 1944-1948, disc 2, ‘Thriving on a Riff’ take 1.”
Savoy-Atlantic