More Vineland - Frenesi, Wayvones, DL, Takeshi

[J Tracy]

Not much P-LIST interest in this PERSONAL walk through Vineland, but I am enjoying thinking about and looking more closely at parts of the narrative I have given less time and attention. Feel free to chime in.
So far I have tried 1) to see Zoyd with fresh eyes. Any thoughts on Zoyd?  2) to look at the importance of the labor movement background to this time. Any thoughts on how P develops and uses this theme?  3) Frenesi may have gone into 24 fps out of family imbued politics, but we see, particularly in her relationship with DL the powerful adrenaline  and erotic pull of being on the frontlines of action which is clearly part of how she gets turned by Vond, becoming an outlaw against the outlaws. Several Neocons wee originally Trotskyites,  Mussolini was a leftist before becoming a fascist.   Thoughts about Frenesi?   Thoughts about attraction to uniforms and power brokers among women, and within the society.  4)  The Wayvones are part of larger forces,  a “wholly owned subsidiary”. The Yakuza , the Mafia, The Jewish Mafia, Russian Mobsters, Operation Gladio, Assassinations, secret wars, The East India corporations that take a lead in M&D.These kinds of players always appear in Pynchon novels as part of the real balance of power in the world.  They always have ties to governments, to trafficking in drugs, slaves, sex, guns, real estate, banks, protection rackets, blood, investments. To ignore them is to ignore the world as it is.  It often becomes hard to distinguish governments from organized crime. Who and what organized organized crime. Pynchon often uses these figures for comic relief as satiric cartoons. It can be annoying. I think of a favorite film-maker Juzo Itami, most famous for Tampopo, who made 2 movies satirizing the Yakuza, the 2nd more viciously, He was attacked beaten, his face slashed and barely surviving was later forced off the roof of his building to his death.  Not so funny. But I do not think Pynchon is really taking these forces lightly and they certainly deserve a to be laughed at, which is something big shots really hate .    Thoughts on any of this from Mob weddings to slave auctions?  5) The ties between DL and Takeshi and their histories is something I am only beginning to think about. There is plenty there, and it is kind of a unique relationship in P’s work. Ideas appreciated.  The section below which starts my look at Takeshi is also wide open for input. 

 MORE VINELAND : 	After the chapter about Sasha‘s background and her relationship with FRENESI the action moves to Frenesi in an apartment with her boyfriend Flash and they’ve just found out that people in the Cointelpro program they are in  are being cut off from federal money. They also get rumors that Brock Bond is out to find FrenesiI .Frenesi tries to cash a hand delivered check and nobody will cash it, we also find that her boyfriend is cheating on her on her and she’s pretty unhappy. with her paycheck to paycheck existence. If  Frenesi can be seen as a representation of the on again and off again, American love affair with cops, authoritarian saviors, and so forth it’s represented pornographically as she masturbates to a cop show. She has not visited her mother since she went over so her estrangement is deeper than just Zoyd or her daughter. As she and Flash are getting out of Dodge we shift to the Billy Barf and the Vomitones now renamed as an Italian band arriving at Ralph Wayvone’s  large estate in. I don’t know it sounds like maybe South Bay San Francisco area possibly Los Altos where the Wayvones are concerned about whether they can do music that will please see the older part of the crowd after their first set of rock ‘n’ roll. A cheat book of Italian songs let’s them pull it off pretty well and DL Chastain shows up at this part of the  wedding party and wows the crowd with her singing. In the bad taste ( gold and pink) restroom she declares herself to Prairie to be  a partner of Takeshi Fumimota seeing P has Takashi‘s business card . DL says she is an old friend of Frenesi. 

The band’s wedding performance lands them a longtime gig at Ralph Wayvone junior‘s bar ( The Cucumber Lounge) up in Humboldt county and Prairie takes off with DL, who knows the Wayvones. Together they drive to a resort for a female ninjas. Before they leave DL has a conversation with Ralph Wayvone Senior, and we find out that he has had contact with Brock Vond. He seems to dislike Vond and regard him as dangerous. We also find out that despite his extravagant house and wealth, he tells his son that the Wayvone enterprise is a wholly owned subsidiary. So who owns them? Secretive business, transactions in cash; hey appear to be connected to the mob and to the police and the politicos, and probably part of the whole elaborate tax hiding structures of those kinds of Enterprises. The name Wayvone has  interesting possibilities.  Does it imply first wave of fascism? One Way ( a religious slogan) with an ominous V in the middle? Does it imply a new order, a growing wave? Does it imply way phony?  All of the above?  Others ???Takeshi also seems to represent this kind of intersection of forces, including mobsters, aliens?, the dead, investigations into Godzilla, the ultimate bigfoot and D.L.   and while the whole karmic adjustment job description seems silly, I would say Pynchon is taking it seriously, if only as a 3rd mythos-oriented layer ( plausible fiction and historical reality being the other 2 layers in his novels) , and maybe even more seriously then guns and movies and television. I intend to do a deeper dive onto Takeshi. He’s a major figure in the book and I feel like I’ve kind of trivialized him a bit in the earlier readings.  
   At the Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives (SKA) (Odd initials-Humboldt County btw was a big center in the 80S-90S for Reggae/Ska etc.)  At SKA Pairie is questioned by Sister Rochelle who is in charge and Prairie begins to cook for the order. Rochelles then takes her to SKA computer archives to research her mother.  She pauses at photo of DL and Frenesi and the reader is drawn  into an account of how the bad-ass motorcyclist DL  saved Frenesi from cops and joined 24 fps.Frenesi is high on their escape and dreams of revolution, DL begins to tell Frenesi about her hard background and the reader is taken into DL’s history in Japan where her father, who beat her mother, taught martial arts. Dl skips school and joins martial arts master Inoshiro sensei and his community, after being sought out by sensei’s disciple while playing Pachinko. .
     His is not the noble warrior tradition:
““DL-san, you are crazy,” he diagnosed gently, “seeing too many movies, maybe. Those you will be fighting—those you must resist—they are neither samurai nor ninja. They are sarariman, incrementalists, who cannot act boldly and feel only contempt for those who can. . . . Only for what I must teach you have they learned respect.” He taught her the Chinese Three Ways, Dim Ching, Dim Hsuen, and Dim Mak, with its Nine Fatal Blows, as well as the Tenth and Eleventh, which are never spoken of. “pg 127
    DLtells Prairie the hard story of her mother’s seduction/turning by Brock Vond , how angry she felt at Vond and was then approached by Ralph Wayvone to use her ninja death touch on Vond, RW  had been ok with Vond until Vond began to focus on war on drugs. We know the CIA was moving heroin out of the golden triangle and Mafia was a major dealer, Seems  at first glance that Vond theatened Wayvone’s business dealings. She splits to Ohio instead, is later capured by Wayvone, again to kill Vond . Vond gets tipped about plan  and  sends Takeshi instead who is seduced and subjected to  death touch technique. 
Talked about deep dive into Takeshi. Turns out that is like a deep dive into shallow water.  But  this realm of the subconscious, the non ideal, the subjection to larger forces is also where changes happen and where Pynchon maps out his worlds. Takeshi  is definitely an active ingredient. Shallow or deep, he tends to wade  in.
Takeshi Fumimota- Takeshi -means brave, determined, fierce, resolute, able to take risks depending on Kanji characters. Fumimota- not real Japanese name possibly meaning bud smoke. Moto- japanese -budding,   fumi/fumes- spanish/english- smoke

Takeshi May have worked on Kamikaze airplanes. 1st appears in chronology of story giving Zoyd biz card for temporary protection from air pirates, then on island  with Godzilla like footprint working for Insurance company exec  Wawazume -Wawazume Life and Non-Life. was agent for W now independent investigator/insurance adjustor/karmic adjuster. Friend Minoru takes him to prosecutor conference where Brock Vond, somewhat of a lookalike gives him a card to have sex with DL ( Vond had been tipped off.about ninja death touch) 

Takeshi is very odd, very human,  afraid to die, likes to drink, take drugs, sex hungry, but also believes there is a calling on his life to bring karmic relief to those who fucked it up and comic relief to the reader. Not greedy, in love with DL, playful, quick witted, brave, philosophically left field. His name gives me the sense he is conjured from   bud smoke , but also from P’s  obsession with searchers  and investigative curiosity  to take a role as a kind of trickster hero bearing an amoral morality that pushes events toward karmic resolution. He reminds us of Zen and Taoist influences on the west in the 60s- Suzuki Roshi, Gary Snyder, Chungliang Al Huang, Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts, but also of Godzilla, kamikazes, Japanese pop culture, Juzo Itami’s Tampopo from 80s,  the yakuza, geishas.  After discovering his exposure to the death touch he flies to SF popping amphetamines, other pills, arrives a mess, Carmine gives him directions to SKA. We find out he was married to actress now in TV hit Babies of Wackines 
That night he has”a great bodylong wave of sorrow beginning to approach, to grow, to shake him apart. All that mostly sleepless night there would be tears in Takeshi’s ears, snot in his mustache, and sinuses aching like love gone astray, though set next to the fact that he was technically dead, these were pretty minor.”

DL compelled by Sister Rochelle to stay with Takeshi for a year and a day to atone for her careless use of the death touch. Takeshi always flirting and making lewd , if friendly, suggestions. 
He( Takeshi) went on an intensive program of Puncutron sessions, herbal therapy, brain-wave recalibrations. Some of these turned out to involve DL. They realized they were being, somehow, tuned to each other. Could be brain waves, could be chi, maybe good old ESP. They would lie hooked up side by side like actors in a brain-transplant movie while the Puncutron vibrated and Takeshi, his musical preferences mysteriously self-revised, now listened through earphones to soul-strumming Tibetan chants( his first  puncutron choice- Chipmunks do Marvin Hamlisch*). He still had no idea who she was. 
* not part of quote

 Rochelle tells Takeshi Story of Lilith before Adam where only male was snake who entices Lilith  with secret knowledge of good and evil and women becoming first priesthood of religion. (This theme introduced in V on Malta and with V her/it self also incarnate in Dante’s Beatrice).  When I visited Okinawa ( Independent language and culture before Japanese takeover) I discovered that their oldest religious practices were overseen by a woman only priesthood.  It is still alive and practicing, including ritual prayers at sacred sites.   But very secretive about deeper mythos, not penetrated by anthropologists. 

Takeshi calls Wawazume, finds out the mystery footprint was made by giant Saurian reconstructed from  the meridianal end points in the sole.. W Tells Takeshi he may be being pursued by same people who seem to have disappeared Minoru, thinking he spilled some beans to Takeshi.
Ortho Bob and thanatoid village along Shade Creek and 7th river( In Humboldt County there are 6 rivers coming down from the coast range, no 7th. Shade is another word for ghost/dark spirit.
“And it was this unscheduled layover in Shade Creek, as they recalled to Prairie years later, that got them into the karmic adjustment business.” p. 172


“as the lab-stomping case, though still wide open, grew less immediate, Takeshi and DL became slowly entangled in other, often impossibly complicated, tales of dispossession and betrayal. They heard of land titles and water rights, goon squads and vigilantes, landlords, lawyers, and developers always described in images of thick fluids in flexible containers, injustices not only from the past but also virulently alive in the present day, like CAMP’s promise of a long future of devoted enforcement from the sky.” 172
Seems to me P is using the thanatoid’s unreslolved grievance to refer to all the “losers” in the class wars, the race wars, the drug wars, the secret wars and the open wars , from Ortho Bob  and 50,000 others in Vietnem, and as many as 50,000 more Viet Vets who committed suicide, to  Medgar Evers, MLK, native Americans to…all victims that don’’t just conveniently die and fade from memory but whose pain lives on, passed through generations and manifesting in addictions from tubal to  opiates to anger and violence and misdirected hate.  Yes it is also all played for  laughs, but the language shifts back and forth, life and death to comic satire,  like a Lynch movie.