Vond

[Joseph Tracy]

Have not read through Frenesi posts yet but wanted to post this first.

Brock Vond : He is another V character In a long list that starts  
with V and continues through ATD. The name reminds of  Von Braun,  
America’s imported Nazi Rocket Scientist who provides the opening  
Quote  for Gravity’s Rainbow. To me the name also suggested 2  
resonant soundings: rock wand as in manly dude with hard cock, and  
broke wand as in  power interrupted, rape averted.  perhaps also  
broke One, as in karmic violence, spirit killer. In historic terms he  
seems like a cross between Ollie North and David Addington( or  
whoever the Reagan equivalent was)

What Vond wants from Frenesi is Weed Atman’s spirit.  He treats her  
as his little messenger and seems to foresee the possibility of not  
only destroying Atman but injuring Atman’s spirit by using Frenesi as  
the instrument of betrayal. It is as though he knows what Frenesi  
will do to him and wants to preemptively return pain.

He has already entered a nether world of spooks and his only pleasure  
is to haunt and be haunted. The ambition of  Nixonian fascism  
possesses and uses him.  He laughs at the love he does not dare to  
ask for.

In one of my first posts on VL I said most of the characters from  VL  
have growth-impeding unresolved issues from the 60’s . They are in a  
state of arrested development and Brock Vond is the literal arrester,  
the spirit of big brother with the power to spy, kill, reform, and  
arrest.  But he too is arrested in his development.  The closest he  
ever got to being loved was Frenesi   a desire he puts in the only  
terms meaningful to him “ to possess her”.

In many ways she is a freedom that cannot be possessed,  and  may be  
mostly fantasy, too easy, unable to find fulfillment in a fantasy  
revolution, she goes for a fantasy of being saved by the powerful  
charm and allure of empire in the form of Vond, then a stab at hippie  
marriage, not exciting enough, not secure enough, back to Mr, power  
charm but unable  hide from the fact that he is a self absorbed creep  
she ends up settling for an unfulfilling marriage, a crumby snitch  
job, fantasy sex with TV cops.

What is being repressed in Vond that translates into  a life of  
psycho-sexual obsession? What is the role of the feminine in the  
psychic architecture of a serious fascist? Does TP’s portrait of Vond  
hold up to scrutiny?  I have to say I think it does, but that power  
freaks seem to divide between the ones with obvious obsessions with  
young women/men/ subordinate sex objects like Limbaugh, McCain,  
Clinton, Strom Thurmond, Gingrich, and those whose real obsession is   
an all consuming  need to possess and use others. To be loved while  
they take all that others have and love, to order the universe aright  
with the strong on top and the weak beneath. Frenesi is the wild  
thing he can’t control, Prairie the future he has not formed, bullied  
or named.



Why does Vond want Weed Atman’s spirit ?