VLVL(12) pgs 226-238

[Bekah]

Hi again,

Not so many good allusions or stuff to annotate so here's a little  
synopsis with what seem to me to be the highlights noted.

And we go from the Thanatoid reunion in Holytail to the reminiscences  
of Weed Atman meeting Dr. Erasmo and the progression of the plot into  
Atman's becoming a Thantoid.

Who is Dr. Elasmo and what does he want with Atman?   Why does Atman  
become so disoriented on seeing Elasmo - is it his televised image  
he's seeing being projected around?   This is widely considered to be  
similar to Kafka's The Trial (or some other work)  -  in what way?     
And Atman's paranoia sets in directly afterward - what has Elasmo  
done to Atman with all that strange, apparently pain inducing,   
equipment at day-long sessions?   Does Elasmo know Vond, what is  
there relationship,  and have they conspired to use Frenesi to get  
Weed?  - (something like that)?

We're drawn back (flashback within a memory)  to 1968 when  Atman,  
after seeing the ubiquitous, televised and highly visible Dr. Elasmo  
everywhere (following him?)  goes in for several "required" day-long  
appointments.

** page 226  -  "long chocolate Fleetwood."   Yeah?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Fleetwood

Atman is becoming paranoid - Paranoids are not paranoid because  
they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking  
idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.  (Is this how the  
aluminum gets into your head - via your teeth?)  Are Vond and Frenesi  
connected in some way to these appointments?


*** Page 227 -  "... Weed, beached these years beside the Sea of  
Death,..."
What is this?   I don't understand what this is alluding to -

  Page 229 -  And Atman's philosophy changes from being in favor of  
non-violent revolution because violence is inhumane,   to being in  
favor of  non-violent revolution because violence escalates (the gun  
will come out and the gun will win).   And Rex has bought into the  
idea of an ongoing  revolution as a progressive giving-up of all  
things personal (getting us over to the fascist side of the  
revolutionaries).   Pynchon has synthesized three of many views of  
non-violent revolution as conceived by the radical theoreticians of  
the late 60s.  (Then they got more violent.)  The ideas are doubltess  
more historical than the '60s  -  I recall this argument from the  
Russian revolution and Gandi's times and the Civil Rights Movement. x

Rex is called on by the Black revolutionaries (Black Panthers?)   to  
give up his Porsch 911 to prove  his commitment to the cause and his  
lack of racism.  He does it.  I also remember something like this in  
the 60s but can't remember the specifics - some essayist wrote about  
this kind of thing.  Tom Wolfe perhaps in Radical Chic or a Bay Area  
paper? And I think Rex sees the situation of the infiltrators but  
can't warn Atman due to his relationship with Frenesi.

This is more on the theme of boundaries - crossing over the line -  
from this world with the LA freeways to that less stable one in the  
dentist's office and from outsider to insider with Rex and his Porsche.

Page 232 -234-  A very brief foray into a fantasy future in which Rex  
and Atman laugh and drink wine remembering the theoretical arguments  
and set-ups of 1968 but in this future Atman is worried about Rex  
having the gun (with some none too subtle homo-erotic undertones).

And then,  with no real warning,  the scene is back in 1969, "You  
seem upset tonight, Rex, what is it?"  and the reader is then moved  
over to Frenesi and Rex telling Howie that Weed is an infiltrator  
with a viscous plan.   They have to get him before he gets them in a  
"sudden-death overtime." (football - penalty shoot-out?)  Frenesi  
gives Howie some pretty standard pro-violence theoretician stuff.   
(They're taking us down, man.)

Page 236  "... drink herb tea and make believe - her dangerous vice-  
that she was on her own, with no legal history..."
Vice - vice?   Again,  as in  "Inherent Vice" ?   (Bek's hung up on  
this future book.)

Page 237 - And now, with this action,  "Frenesi understood that she  
had taken at least one irreversible step to the side of her life, and  
that now, as if on some unfamiliar drug, she was walking around next  
to herself, haunting herself,  attending a movie of it all."

She knows what she's done.  She's been distancing herself anyway -  
but now it's irreversible.  And she's a bit crazy from it, can't talk  
to anyone.  I'm put in mind of Raskolikov in Crime and Punishment and  
how he gets rather spooky and seems to have less than good control so  
he almost sleepwalks his way into his crimes and then becomes  
paranoid and demented afterwards.

Earlier,  in an Anaheim motel room,  Frenesi  heard the worms play  
pinochle on Atman's snout but she doesn't really remember this until  
years later.  (flashing back and forth - what is this a light show  
with time?)

(Why is there an asterisk at the top of page 239?)

Bekah