[Robin Landseadel]

On Apr 18, 2009, at 8:40 AM, Paul Mackin wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Landseadel" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net 
> >
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 10:29 AM
> Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re:
>
>
>> On Apr 18, 2009, at 4:25 AM, Richard Ryan wrote:
>>> Don't remember who on the list suggested that Prairie was the  
>>> "true"  protagonist of VL. . .
>>
>> Yours truly.
>>
>> If any of Pynchon's books show Feminist influences, then this is  
>> the  one.
>
> Is Frenesi at leaast a co-protagonist?

I see her as object of the quest. Note how Prairie learns of her much  
as she learned about so much else, through someone else's lens, the  
computer files at the Ninjette institute & the film archives of 24fps,  
archives that up in smoke just as all plotlines converge in Vineland.  
The concern, expressed more explicitly or obviously in "V.", of the  
mechanical subsuming the human, here turns to the simulacra of those  
persons in film form. There is, still, an overarching fear or dread of  
photography. The film of Fresesi is all Prairie sees of her mother— 
until the novel's climatic reunion of three generations worth of left- 
leaning freaks. When that finally happens it's only to watch Sasha  
insist that Prairie sing the theme from Gilligan's Island.

Of course, the stories spread out among a number of Gals in Vineland.  
They are the actors in the novel. Think of Prairie's overhaul of the  
Ninjette Kitchen, or the delightful martial arts of the DL/Takeshi  
relationship, or the love/hate thing between Frenesi & Brock. In the  
Brock/Frenesi tango, Frenesi's the Protagonist & Brock's the central  
bad guy of the novel. He strikes me as a close relative of Woevre in  
Against the Day.

> She in conflict with Vond as much as Prairie?

More. We only have the one showdown of Prairie and Mad Dog Vond very  
near the end of the book, mirroring the Star Wars citation at the  
front of the book, at the Log Jam, up in Del Norte. Prairie's on a  
quest & on the run, Frenesi's in the center of that quest. Frenesi got  
her burn notice when her check didn't clear, so she's now off the hook  
& on the run [lotta chase scenes in this one, nicht whar?], DL's on  
the run from her own karma, delivered to her in the form of that bum  
death-touch job on Tasheki. All these actions were triggered by Brock  
Vond, all roads lead to.

> Prairie is least conflicted perhaps.

Prairie is sorta doing what Oedipa Maas is doing, doing her damnedest  
to get to the bottom of it all. She arches over all the stories, we  
find out [more often than not] more when watching through Prairie's  
eyes—often watching a film editor or a computer screen.

This all makes me think of OBA's well documented allergy to  
photography and "Inherent Vice." Inherent Vice is
a property—innate to the object—that will result in that object's self- 
destruction. Photography's processes are full of inherent vice.  
Besides whatever fears one might have of being recognized when doesn't  
really want to, there is the photochemical & mechanical nature of the  
thing in and of itself, how quickly and easily a snapshot can fade if  
left in the light, the high likelihood of false color registration,  
the distortions in perspective zoom lenses offer. I think of that in  
terms of Prairie's view of times she didn't live in. The film  
archive's of 24fps is but a small moment of time compared to the hours  
and hours of Television she [and I] watched.