VL-IV: Godzilla ...

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

... has been on our author's mind for quite some time before Vineland:
 
"Metzger handed Oedipa aboard the about-to-be hijacked vessel, 
a 17-foot-aluminium trimiran known as the GODZILLA II ..."
 
(The Crying Of Lot 49, chapter three, where the vessel gets mentioned
one/three/couple further times)
 
Oh, and in Col49 (see chapter six) there's even already a glimpse of AtD:
 
"In the 15c dark green from the 1893 Columbian Exposition Issue 
('Columbus Announcing His Discovery'), the faces of the three courtiers,
receiving the news at the right side of the stamp, had been subtly 
altered to express uncontrollable fright."
 
The autopoietic inter-textuality of Pynchon's books becomes more 
and more dense. 
 
 
kfl