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

[David Morris]

I really don’t like Vineland.  I tried to give it an honest second shot
many years ago here in a group read, and I concluded that it is my very
least favorite Pynchon novel, for many reasons.

David Morris

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 10:19 PM Michael Bailey <
michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
> --
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>