Any suggestions to make this a better quick plot summary for VL?

[Michael Bailey]

Just trying to give a sense of Vineland to a hypothetical friend or two
with intelligence but minimal to no literary knowledge, wanting to hit the
high points



1) even among Pynchon fans it gets disrespected - I never understand why (-;

2) it starts out in 1984 with the forces of marijuana Prohibition closing
in on pothead Zoyd Wheeler, musician and welfare recipient but also odd-job
doer and gypsy roofer…anything to support his daughter and keep building on
to his home, which started as a small trailer but now has numerous additions

2a) Zoyd has made a deal with the villainous Brock Vond of the DEA to let
him keep his daughter Prairie, but he has to do something crazy every year
to keep collecting SSI so they know where he is, otherwise they will get
Child Social Services to take away his daughter.


3) it flashes back and forth between 1968 and 1984

4) magical realism - a South American literary current, exemplified by
Gabriel Garcia Marquez among others, which mixes a bit of fantasy into an
otherwise straightforward story

Vineland has some magical realist elements:

 - the Puncutron Machine, which automates acupuncture and is used in Ninja
nunnery, The Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives, to cure the character
Takeshi of a kung fu deathblow inflicted upon him in error by DL, a lady
Ninja. Her penance is to be his bodyguard for a year and a day. They
eventually fall in love.

- business cards that detect the presence of other business cards from the
same character (Takeshi) and play a little tune to alert the bearers

- Takeshi’s business is Karmic Adjustment & he works with “Thanatoids” who
are probably ghosts, to reconcile them to the ills they suffered in life

- a UFO tries to take over a jet flying to Hawaii, but the main character,
Zoyd, drives them off by playing a B flat on his keyboard. Among the
passengers is Takeshi, who gratefully gives Zoyd one of his musical
business cards

- at one point, there’s a TransAm with a mirror finish, so it’s effectively
invisible


5) Star-crossed lovers - Zoyd, a musician, marries radical photographer
Frenesi back in the 60s, but Frenesi is seduced violently by villainous DEA
agent Brock Vond and persuaded to betray her friends.
Even after she does his bidding, Vond jails Frenesi, abusing the power of
the State, as is his won’t, in order to detain her and sedate her with
psych meds.

Frenesi escapes with the help of DL (the lady Ninja.)

But Vond catches up with Frenesi - who can’t resist him, which is perhaps
due to a touch of battered woman syndrome, although according to this book,
at this juncture, villain Vond only uses vigorous sex and verbal abuse
which are enough to keep her subservient - and he enlists her in his
informer program, keeping her far away from her husband Zoyd and their baby
daughter Prairie. Zoyd has to be a single parent.

6) student rebellion - details of how in 1968, students briefly took over
the (fictional) College of the Surf in SoCal, and called it the People’s
Republic of Rock and Roll (PR3)

7)  Prairie (teenage daughter of Frenesi and Zoyd) leaves home just as the
DEA is about to seize the house where Zoyd raised her. As she leaves, he
gives her Takeshi’s business card to hold onto.

At first, Prairie travels in the company of her boyfriend Isaiah 2:4
(hippie parents named him after Bible verse about beating swords into
plowshare) and his band, “Billy Barf and the Vomitones”

— the band has a gig at a Mafia wedding.
At the wedding, Prairie visits the restroom, where the old Takeshi business
card, that her dad Zoyd gave her, lets out a chime indicating the
proximity of another such business card - and she meets DL.

They spend some time at the Ninja Nunnery.

DL introduces Prairie to old radical friends of her mother’s, Zippi and
Ditzah Pisk, who give her access to computer files about the student
takeover of the College of the Surf, the short-lived People’s Republic of
Rock and Roll, or “PR3”, and how her mom betrayed Weed Atman, one of the
leaders of the PR3.

Brock Vond’s DEA agents burn down Zippi and Ditzah Pisk’s house.

The book winds up with Zoyd, Prairie, and Frenesi all going to a big family
reunion of several generations of radical unionists and lefties, socialists
of all stripes.

Frenesi has remarried, not to DEA agent Brock Vond, but to Flash, one of
her fellow informers.

Zoyd accepts the situation, and has a beer with her new husband.

Prairie goes off to unroll her sleeping bag in a secluded part of the
woods. Villainous DEA agent Brock Vond tries to kidnap her, but just as
he’s about to whisk her away, the Reagan Administration cuts his funding
and he tries to drive away but ends up in the land of the Thanatoids.