VL-IV 3: Zuniga's Aria pgs 51/52

[Robin Landseadel]

Another remarkable set-piece.

The Säure Bummer/Gustav Schlabone dialogs on music from Gravity's  
Rainbow resonated for me in a way that goes deeper than just lit-crit.

http://tinyurl.com/9vs4k4

I’ve been a devoted fan of Beethoven’s music for many years, and  
always noted how Säure Bummer championed Rossini over Beethoven for  
reasons that went far beyond simply liking the tunes:

	The point is," cutting off Gustav's usually indignant scream, "a
	person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like listening
	to Beethoven is going out and invading Poland. Ode to Joy
	indeed. The man didn't even have a sense of humor. I tell you,"
	shaking his skinny old fist, "there is more of the Sublime in the
	snare-drum part to La Gazza Ladra than in the whole Ninth
	Symphony. With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always
	get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is the
	one great centripetal movement of the World. Through the
	machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love
	occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are
	breached, the balconies are scaled-listen!" It was a night in
	early May, and the final bombardment of Berlin was in progress.
	Saure had to shout his head off. "The Italian girl is in Algiers, the
	Barber's in the crockery, the magpie's stealing everything in
	sight! The World is rushing together .... "

At the time I first read those words, Beethoven's was the greatest  
music of all time, at least in my blinkered perspective. After reading  
the passage I was struck by Herr Bummer’s point about Rossini  
transmuting shit into gold. Pynchon's love and respect for Rossini’s  
skills are reflected in his comic set pieces. Oddly enough, these two  
scenes — Hector’s “Aria” and the Bummer/Schlabone musical dialogs,  
come to similar ends, with a farcical invasion of the stage by some  
paramilitary forces that are is some way anti-drug/addiction. Those  
scenes are followed by a couple two-three comic rimshots:

	Back in Saure's room the heat come busting in. Berlin police
	supported by American MPs in an adviser status.

	"You will show me your papers!" hollers the leader of the raid.

	Saure smiles and holds up a pack of Zig-Zags, just in from
	Paris.

====================================================

	At which point, finally, in through the doors front and rear of
	Bodhi Dharma Pizza came the NATO-camouflaged guys and
	gals of the Tubaldetox goon squad, to bring Hector gently "back
	to where we can help you," cajoling him through the crowd,
	who'd begun to chant again. Doc Deeply, grooming his beard,
	strode over, high-fiving Baba Havabananda on the way.

. . .back to Hector's Aria:

	"Then I still need to know," Zoyd addressed the beleaguered
	narc up on the table, "why Brock Vond and his army is doin' this
	to me."

	As if their chanting had been recitative for Hector's aria,
	everyone now fell silent and attended. . .

So lots of set-up here—note that the chanting sounds like throat- 
singing to me [thus pointing to the larger themes of Buddhism, Karma  
and Compassion], and is yet another reference to Vineland’s extensive  
collection of footnotes, otherwise known as “Against the Day' .” As it  
turns out,  Hector’s real motive is to cook up a very made-for-TV anti- 
drug movie about Frenesi, a stern warning about the Hippies and  
rebellion. It seems as though Hector is betting on Brock Vond  going  
after Frenesi, now that she’s off of RICO’s budget and no longer  
hidden in plain sight. Hector’s also betting on the “one great  
centripetal movement of the World” drawing Frenesi towards Prairie and  
pulling up Vond from the rear:

	"About this 'we,' " Zoyd was wondering, "have you brought
	Cap'n Vond on board this project yet, you and this Ernie?"

	Hector was looking down at his shoes. "We didt'n finalize it."

	"Y'haven't been in touch with him at all, right?"

	"Well I don't know who is, ése, nobody's returnin calls."

The context here provided—lots of Hollywood references—make it all  
that much easier to read what follows as a made for TV movie, or at  
least as a parody of made for TV movies.

	"I don't believe this, you wantin' to be in the world of
	entertainment, when all along I had you pegged as a real
	terrorist workin' for the State? When you said cuttin' and shootin'
	I didt'n know you were talkin' about film. I thought th' only kind of
	options you cared about were semi- and full automatic. Why, I'm
	lookin' at Steven Spielberg, here."

	"Risking a lifelong career in law enforcement," put in the saintly
	night manager, who called himself Baba Havabananda, "in the
	service of the ever-dwindling attention span of an ever more in-
	fantilized population. A sorry spectacle."

	"Yah, well you sound like Howard Cosell."

There is so much incident in these few pages, so many event leading to  
so many plot motivators down the road. . .

	four-door Farces?
	"four-door farce" also occurs in Against the Day, p.567. One of

	the recurring physical jokes in such plays involves sets with

	many doors and people coming in and out, just missing each

	other. A French writer, George Feydeau, was famous for writing

   	them at the time of ATD, which makes the possible pun on his

	last name — Feydeau, four-door — anachronous in M & D but

	still resonant, perhaps. See a modern example, Peter

	Bogdanovich's movie What's Up Doc?.



http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_18:_183-189



	Four-door farce
	561; A farce is a light comedy, often employing "broad physical

	humour, and deliberate absurdity or nonsense." (Sound like

	anyone we know?) According to actor/director Charles

	Whitman, a farce is "characterized by a lot of mistakes, mistaken

	identities, near misses. You can always tell a farce, because

	the actors are always coming in or going out a door."

	Sometimes referred to as slamming- or banging-door farce.



http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=F



. . . point being, that if Vineland is to be likened to an Opera, it  
is a Comic Opera, like Rossini’s “Barber of Seville”, coming from the  
tradition of four-door farce. All this in the wake of the  
"Götterdämmerung" of "Gravity's Rainbow."