VLVL(12) pgs 239- 246

[Bekah]

This is part two of a large chunk in section 12 dealing with 1969.

This is a couple days before Atman's death.  Vond and Frenesi meet in  
a very strange place.  (try to visualize the set-up on page 239  
paragraph 1.)   Does this sound like a winner for your next planned  
vacation?  (ummm....)


Frenesi wore ... and round wire-rims with ND-1 filters for lenses.
http://www.eyeglasseswarehouse.com/20th-century-eyeglasses.html
Neutral Density filters.   I think these are for cameras, they darken  
things a bit so you can take photos at a  faster (?) speed.  (but  
maybe that's exactly what Frenesi wants?)  (heh)    Eyeglass lenses  
which darken are usually called "photo-grey."

The following sentence is so long and convoluted that I shall not try  
to parse it...

"Neither (Vond nor Frenesi) had offered the other anything liquid -  
it was among the least of all the civilities allowed to lapse  
throughout Brock's profession as the Nixonian Reaction continued to  
penetrate and compromise further what may only in some facing  
memories ever have been a people's miracle, an army of loving  
friends, as betrayal became routine, government procedures for it so  
simple and greased that no one, Frenesi was finding out, no matter  
how honorable their lives so far, could be considered safely above  
it, wherever "above" was supposed to be, with money from the CIA,  
FBI, and others circulating everywhere, leaving the merciless spores  
of paranoia wherever it flowed, fungoid reminders of its passage."

.... but rather simply point out how the Nixonian Reaction had a  
totally chilling,  devastating effect on the "army of loving friends"  
due to the money-based betrayals.   All were suspect,  no one was  
"above" it.

"Above"?

Frenesi  reports to Vond about how the "key log"  came loose.   The  
key log would be the pivot on which a woodpile is balanced - if this  
log is moved the pile comes tumbling down).  Key log equals Atman and  
because his credibility is now doubted and  paranoia pervades the  
campus,   "it worked." So it  was obviously a plot by Vond.

  But Vond tells her that Atman really is an infiltrator having been  
"convinced" at the dentist visits.   Now Vond gives Frenesi the gun  
to give to Rex and he tells her that if she can bring a camera she  
can bring a gun -

  "... one is make-believe, one is real... what if there is some  
branch point in your life, where you'll have to choose between  
worlds?"  (pg 241)  -

and now we've got a pretty graphic description of the gun as sex- 
organ metaphor - or is it to the point of being a semiotic sign?

But although Frenesi still believes in the 24fps means of getting at  
the truth,  she now has nothing more to negotiate with - (I swear,   
Frenesi is Lake in AtD - sticking by her man.  -  ("He may be a  
asshole, but he's MY asshole.")  and she has to take the gun.

**
And now you can take a peek at
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/moran24.htm
(A very interesting essay/article)
:
(Molly)  Hite believes that Vineland is informed by a meditation on  
power and gender and that it reveals how the concepts of masculinity  
and femininity are social constructions.22   Pynchon's characters  
reveal that the masculine is by definition that which oppresses,  
symbolized by Brock's fantasy of holding a pistol to Frenesi's head  
and making her perform sexual acts.23   In Hite's words: "This  
account of the construction of masculinity in turn indicates how  
relations between men, and ultimately masculinity itself, are thereby  
dependent on ... femininity .... [T]he feminine here is necessary to  
the constructed masculine identity, which is threatened and may even  
disintegrate when the feminine eludes or exceeds its control."24     
Dependence on this constructed vision of men and women is further  
revealed in Brock's dreams of being a security guard who is raped by  
a feminine persona.   Hite states that Brock's security guard  
identity aligns him with the national state he serves and represents,  
an identity that is vulnerable because of its oppressive and  
repressive character.25   Each rape visited upon Brock is a source of  
"drastic diminution," underscoring his unconscious fears and  
eventually leading Brock (a Justice Department official) to separate  
Frenesi--the feminine subject he is able to recognize--from her own  
baby.26

**

Then in Frenesi's reveries we are transported to a hypothetical  
future in which she is being questioned by Vond at a Grand Jury  
hearing about the death of Atman.  "Nobody attempted to trace the  
path of the gun."

This is the second hypothetical or fantasized future in this  
chapter.  Neither one comes to pass.

And Frenesi does get the gun to Rex and that's how it came to be in  
Rex's bag for Atman to observe  when Frenesi and Rex accuse him of  
being an infiltrator/spy/snitch. (see page 234)

The PR3 have gathered and Frenesi is trying to talk Weed into  
explaining himself on film.  Rex returns and the moment of truth (and  
death) arrives - Atman calls Frenesi's name and the frame twisted off  
his face...

(the scene moves to Ditzah's house in the Valley where she and  
Prairie are watching the footage in 1984)

"and the frame twisted off his face... "

*****

I've never read so many back-flashes, flash-forwards, back-ups,  
fantasy forwards, back behind the back-ups in one chapter (or book).   
This little technique of repeated back and forth scene switching is  
done quite well,  it's very smooth,  polished,  that there has to be  
some reason.

Questions:

What is Pynchon trying to do with the  time switches between 1969,  
1984, and in between.

1.  Are the switches in time and place done arbitrarily or is there a  
rhythm, a rhyme or a reason to them?

And are they intended:
1.  to replicate the way movies were doing the  backflash/forward  
flash - now meld into three days ago?

2.  to make some kind of statement that 'The past is not dead. It is  
not even past yet'.?  (Faulkner) - or, otoh and considering the  
unrealized fantasies about the future,  saying that the past is dead  
- and almost beyond recall, that the Nixonian Reaction squashed it?

3.  to confuse the reader?

PART B:
Is this quicktime forward/backward chronology replicated in other  
works of OBA's oeuvre?

Bekah