VL-IV Chap 3 & 4 Overview pgs 25, 26, 55

[John Bailey]

The tostada reassembly is surely a reference to Richard Dreyfuss'
mystical mash-potato construction in Close Encounters of the Third
Kind (1977). Fits with Hector's character as a slightly nutty
obsessive rather than an out-and-out sociopath.

And now begins Vineland's dietary dialectic. Californian health fads
are pretty prominent in VL, and I think the vegetarian stuff prefaces
the final song of ATD. I still don't know what to make of either.

Has any ever collated a Pynchon recipe book? M&D and ATD, especially,
go into detail about the ingredients of most meals. I can't help
feeling that food presents its own symbolic order in P's universe, and
is at least as worthy of study as the role of colour in ATD etc.

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 4:42 AM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> There's lots of cars in Vineland, so it should comes as no shock that wild
> things move fast in these parts. We start with Zoyd & Hector at a bowling
> alley, destroying a cali-mex lunch:
>
>        He ordered the Health Food Enchilada Special and Hector had
>        the soup of the day, cream of zucchini, and the vegetarian
>        tostada, which upon its arrival he began to take apart piece by
>        piece and reassemble as something else Zoyd could not
>        identify but which seemed to hold meaning for Hector. . .
>