More Vineland

[Mark Kohut]

Thanks, Joseph.

On Wed, Feb 4, 2026 at 12:28 AM J Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> So as I mentioned, I am re-reading Vineland, and finding details in the
> back stories that are drawing my interest and attention more this time
> around. I am glad there are others reading Vineland and commenting  and
> hope disagreements can be respectful and enjoyable. I already wrote a bit
> about my overall take on the novel and its thematic continuity with other P
> novels and will be adding some more specific thoughts and areas of focus as
> I read and ponder.
>
> Zoyd- 1) has to renew his qualifications as disabled every year and does
> so with certain flair by acts of defenestration, this is humiliating but we
> find he is doing so to protect an agreement by which he survives in
> obscurity  removing him and his daughter from a past with LA cops and
> Federal agents. The defenestration feels loaded to this reader. He is both
> breaking the law and at the same time limiting the ability of the agents of
> law to completely bury him. He was more someone who was thrown out of his
> place in society than someone who broke away. He married a beautiful
> revolutionary  from a family of lefties who got turned into an agent of
> FBI  Cointelpro type program and appears to have made a profoundly
> miserable choice for herself and those ho actually care for her. Zoyd got
> caught in the crossfire.
>   I find Zoyd both unimpressive and sympathetic. He has many friends,
> knows his small community, loves his daughter, is a versatile survivor-band
> keyboardist, carpenter, crayfish hunter,  and has a sharp sense of humor.
> His deep sadness over his lost love is not being handled in a good way,
> alcoholism, shallow sexuality, pot, un handled debts.  He has a powerful
> internal feistiness against authoritarianism though he is no idealist, no
> revolutionary  and would rather avoid trouble. It is this quality that
> oddly distinguishes him from Frenesi’s more self-serving connection to anti
> fascist rebellion.
>
> Suddenly his worst fears have come to town with hectoring Hector Zuniga(
> our introduction to the role of TV and cop shows in US culture),  possibly
> Frenesi, and Brock Vond.  He is not passive in the face of this, He sends
> his teenage daughter away with a rock band leader to a gig he helped set
> up. , giving her a card from the strange figure of Takeshi, and moves out
> of his house.
>
> Kahuna Airlines  and Japan Airlines  flight 1628 -  Pynchon loves the
> weird, the intersection of  the real strange and the fictional/mythical
> strange, probing at how our imaginations and possible other dimensions
> interact with what is deemed normal and real. One of the telling and rich
> threads of Vineland involves the character Takeshi Fumimota  whose name
> appears over 130 times  ( I lost count)  He first appears during an act of
> air piracy on Kahuna airlines where he escapes the attention of the pirates
> by sitting in with Zoyd on uke ( P has a thing for ukulelesTraverse as Z
> entertains passengers with his keyboard. This was written in the 80s and
> there was an interesting incident over Alaska  where the crew of a
> transport plane of Japan airlines saw 3 ufo type crafts near their 747 . It
> was rare in that the unknown crafts were tracked on radar and the
> description by the pilot and crew was detailed. Seems a likely candidate as
> inspiration for this humorous and slightly ominous scene. Hectors card is
> important to the plot.
>
> OK enough for today. Plenty of fun stuff in these opening doings along
> with the sad story of Zoyd’s  last try to contact Frenesi.  Next up  a look
> at The Traverse and Becker Families the Wobblies and Sasha.
>
>
>
> --
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