Van Meter

[Rob Jackson]

> Zoyd is no Van Meter, who, in turn, is no Frenesi/Flash

Yes, this hierarchy seems about right, and even though many of Flash's  
priors aren't spelled out in the narrative,  he is probably a notch  
beyond Frenesi, at least in terms of "criminal" activity and the  
extent/s to which he has been "turned". Flash's past is detailed only  
very vaguely because it's the unwritten code in this milieu when  
referring to "miscellaneous folks in out of the night" (8),  
"politicals fleein' from different jurisdictions" (25), and so forth,  
to couch the references to illicit activity in ambiguous terms and not  
name names, which is why Zoyd doesn't ever explicitly drop Van Meter's  
name as a snitch. And which is also why "snitching" is such a big  
deal, breaking that code.

But there does seem to be a little bit of parallelling going on as  
well: Zoyd with wise-cracking Prairie and Frenesi and Flash with  
precocious young Justin. It's a typical sit-com conceit: one of VL's  
themes, underdeveloped as many of them are in the novel, seems to be  
that "the child is father of the man". The later descriptions  
recalling the time that Zoyd and VM looked after Prairie as a baby  
after Z had escaped from Brock Vond's clutches are also very  
sympathetic.

At the end of the novel, even despite Zoyd's hypocrisy and complicity,  
Frenesi's sleeping with and working for the enemy, and Flash's shadowy  
past and present, they're all ultimately welcomed back into the family  
fold of the "Traverse-Becker annual reunion". So there is a sense of  
forgiveness there as well, even for Frenesi and Flash. It's  
sentimental and cheesy and akin to the obligatory sit-com pay-off, but  
self-consciously so, and there is a degree of "heart" in VL which  
seems to be absent from the two most recent novels.

all best