"Reenter[ing] the clockwork of cause and effect"

So I'm a little over 100 pages into Vineland now (it being the first book this semester that I haven't read before). It's hard not to just start underlining the words I learned to underline in Gravity's Rainbow, like "shit" "paper" "ink" "History" etc. And Zoyd's pot habit (the effects of the drug, but also the social persecution) seems like a simple-enough filter to think about paranoia again through. I get the impression that, although it's like half the length of GR, Vineland is playing its cards fairly close to the chest over the course of this exposition, because I'm not really able to put together all that much in terms of analysis so far. But I'm thinking now that this probably has more to do with the whole not-having-prior-knowledge-of-the-ending aspect, and less to do with the novel itself. Maybe it's just less "serious" (or less "grave," without Gravity always there to keep me in line...)

Either way, I think what caught my attention most of all in the first few chapters was all the plays on "the Tube," first of all as a name for the holy and omnipresent television, but also as the barrel of a surfer's perfect wave (tubular, man). They meet nicely at the point that a lot of characters spend time "surfing the channels of the Tube": Zoyd, Justin Fletcher, Frenesi, Hector, etc. Pretty much everyone I've encountered has had some semi-scene at least of being rapt in the "light of the Tube."

But for all this Tube-worshipping, I thought it was interesting that in Hawaii chasing Frenesi, Zoyd, discussing suicide, says that "the only thing holding [him] back...is the indignity of lying there all splattered by the pool and in my last few seconds on Earth, hearing Jack Lord say 'Book him, Danno -- Suicide One.'" (60) First of all, it's really funny. But critically, I read it as Zoyd's inability to disassociate Hawaii (and presumably other locales) from their television counterparts. To die in Hawaii, is to die in Hawaii 5-0. Then, thinking about it a little more, I got to thinking that perhaps this understanding is more of a symptom than a condition. The condition I think would be that Zoyd is afraid of his death (and consequently his life) being reduced to a thirty-minute TV episode, a stinger line to sum it all up. I'll try to follow this up, as I go on, but keeping in mind, I don't know where the book is going, feel free to dissuade me here.

Then there's this presence of the interplanetary. Zoyd drops a beer can from a balcony onto some guy's surfboard: his suspicions extend "far beyond Earth's orbit." (59) The end of Millard and Blodwen's surreal sixties adventure to a cabin out in the redwoods is said to be where "they'd first come back down to Earth." (48) "Earth," "orbit," "planet," etc. These words are all over the place. As I go on, I'll be looking for what the idea of Earth, situated in all this cosmic hippie mysticism, might mean/say/be. The scene on Zoyd's Kahuna Airlines flight that gets boarded, when those "hostages" are taken, seems like with some future-knowledge it could become even more significant.

The last chapter I read, the long-ish backstory on Frenesi, had an interesting passage I wanted to single out. Sasha (her mother, the script-reader) is complaining: "History in this town...is no more worthy of respect than the average movie script, and it comes about in the same way." (81) It would be stupid I think not to apply what we talked about in GR to this statement, insofar as it ties a concept of "History" to the cinematic, this time in the form of a script, which is interesting because it implies something that is pre-written which actors must enact (that sounds dumb). The script, though, was a filmic image that was kind of ignored in Gravity's Rainbow, most of the attention directed toward the director, the camera, the lighting. (von Göll, the film of Katje at SOE, Alpdrücken). Sasha goes on to say that once there's one version of a script, "Parties you never heard of get to come in and change it. Characters and deeds get shifted around, heartfelt language gets pounded flat when it isn't just removed forever." This sounds an awful lot like a corporate complaint, big faceless specter-groups rearranging "human" interaction. I guess it's probably significant too that Sasha is Frenesi's mother, meaning that she lived through World War II (i.e., she lived through Gravity's Rainbow) and has some sort of perspective on those times. A page earlier, she posits that "Maybe we all have to submit to History." (80) What does that mean, coming from her?

Sometimes I really wonder why I'm so in love with Pynchon's writing when I'm so historically uninformed (read: ignorant). I think I need to at least read the Wikipedia page on Reaganomics or something before I miss out on something important. But then there are times, like in this book when Prairie tells Zoyd frankly, "Love is strange, Dad," (16) and I'm reminded that these characters are in conflict with history too.

I'll do look into Reagan either way.

Matt