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            "7": {
                "pageid": 7,
                "ns": 0,
                "title": "Reviews of Vineland",
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                        "*": "Summer, 1990 - [[Yale Review - \"State and Vine\"|'''\"State and Vine\" in the ''Yale Review''''']] - Richard Powers: \"All fallen and even abused children, like Frenesi, with her \"shadows of her shoulder blades, like healed stumps of wings ritually amputated once long ago,\" will, for better or worse, never escape the need for parenting, for a bedtime story. Yes, narrative may be a form of paranoia, a frightened systems-building to counter or create conspiracies, real and imagined. But narrative can be more: in ''Vineland'' it is an interrogation of power, a flexing of imagination and observation, an urgent verbal gag straining to redeem what innocence is left us by the State. In this, its only weapon, as always, is continuous telling and retelling. Whatever other astonishments and innovations have landed him securely in American readers' imaginations, Pynchon remains above all a story-spinner, winning another few moments for the mind's eye. So tell us another one, Pop, before it gets too dark.\"\n\n03/23/90 - [http://www-tech.mit.edu/V110/N15/vine.15a.html '''The Tech'''] - Mark Webster: \"The Tube is ubiquitous. Life is defined, framed, imitated, and irradiated by the Tube. Movie and TV show titles have dates next to them as if they were references for the story. Pynchon can pack more historical, literary, scientific, and entertainment references into a single sentence than anyone. The tone of ''Vineland'' is softer, more conciliatory than in past works. There is a hopeful sense of coming together that contrasts with the apocalyptic [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. Could the years be mellowing Pynchon? No matter, his talents remain sharp, and it's good to hear from the master of the absurd again.\"\n\n03/09/90 - [http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1990/03/reading-pynchon-s-prayer/ '''Chicago Reader'''] - Jonathan Rosenbaum: \"A novel that begins and ends with literal awakenings (of Zoyd and Prairie, respectively), ''Vineland'' structures its vinelike meanderings through an ingenious system of flashbacks and a few key images. (The exposition is arranged so that even the most fugitive vines in the narrative tangle eventually prove to be linked: Zoyd and Prairie\u2019s house, for instance, which figures in the opening pages, is only described in some detail toward the novel\u2019s end, and its bric-a-brac construction resembles Pynchon\u2019s own building methods.) The flashbacks are mainly a matter of shared memories, and the incidents in 1984 that occasion them are not always the settings that the reader returns to when they\u2019re over.\"\n\n02/26/90 - [[The Nation Review - John Leonard|'''The Nation''']] by John Leonard: \"''Vineland'' — a multimedia semithriller, a ''Star Wars'' for the counterculture — is easier to read than anything else by Thomas  Pynchon  except ''The Crying of Lot 49''. Like ''Crying'', it's a brief for the disinherited and dispossessed, the outlaws and outcasts of an underground America. Also like ''Crying'', I suspect it's a breather between biggies. It doesn't feel like something obsessed-about and fine-tuned for the seventeen years since ''Gravity's Rainbow''. It feels unbuttoned, as though the author-god had gone to a ballgame; another, darker, magisterial mystification is implied, maybe the rumored Mason-Dixon opus. This doesn't make ''Vineland'' a Sunday in the Park with George, but at least it can be summarized without my sounding too much like an idiot.\"\n\n01/15/90 - [[Vineland Review, Time Magazine|'''Time Magazine''']] by Paul Gray: \"Pynchon's devotion to electronic allusions has been criticized before, and ''Vineland'' will no doubt increase the number of protests. It is, admittedly, disquieting to find a major author drawing cultural sustenance from The Brady Bunch and I Love Lucy instead of The Odyssey and the Bible. But to condemn Pynchon for this strategy is to confuse the author with his characters. He is a gifted man with anti-elitist sympathies. Like some fairly big names in innovative fiction, including Flaubert, Joyce and Faulkner, Pynchon writes about people who would not be able to read the books in which they appear. As a contemporary bonus, Pynchon's folks would not even be interested in trying. That is part of the sadness and the hilarity of this exhilarating novel.\"\n\n01/14/90 - [[Vineland Review, New York Times|'''New York Times''']] by Salmon Rushdie: \"Vineland, Mr. Pynchon's mythical piece of northern California, is, of course, also ''Vinland,'' the country discovered by the Viking Leif Ericsson long before Columbus. It is ''Vineland the Good''; that is to say, this crazed patch of California stands for America itself. And it is here, to ''Vineland'', that one of America's great writers has, after long wanderings down his uncharted roads, come triumphantly home.\"\n\n12/31/89 - [[LA Times Review - Frank McConnell|'''Los Angeles Times Book Review''']] - Frank McConnell: \"''Vineland'' is, quite simply, one of those books that will make the world — our world, our daily chemical-preservative, plastic-wrapped bread — a little more tolerable, a little more human. Kafka says somewhere that the books we need are the books that are ice axes to break up the frozen sea within ourselves; and Pynchon, here as he always has, makes the cut.\""
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            "52": {
                "pageid": 52,
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                "title": "The Hawaiian Islands and Ukuleles",
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                        "*": "<seo metak=\"hawaii,uke,ukes,ukuleles\" metad=\"This page tracks references to Hawaii and Ukuleles in Thomas Pynchon's Vineland.\" />\n\n== History of the Hawaiian Islands ==\nHawaii is actually the exposed peaks of a huge undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, formed by volcanic activity over a hotspot in the Earth's mantle. The Hawaiian Islands are located almost midway between Japan and the continental United States. Named the Sandwich Islands by Captain Cook, the first white man to visit the islands, arriving at Kealakekua Bay on January 17, 1779, the Hawaiian Islands are named for the largest island, [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/big-island-hawaii/big-island.html the Big Island of Hawaii]. The other islands are [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/kauai/kauai.html Kauai], [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/maui/maui.html Maui], [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/oahu/oahu.html Oahu], location of the state capitol of Honolulu, and the ever-popular [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/oahu/honolulu-waikiki-beachfront-rentals.html Waikiki district]), [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/molokai/molokai.html Molokai], and [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/lanai/lanai.html Lanai]. \n\nThe historical record of the Hawaiian Islands is largely unwritten and there are competing theories about how the islands were settled. One theory holds that the islands were originally settled by the Menehune, a race of tiny people from the Marquesas Islands, somewhere between 300-400 C.E., and were invaded by Tahitians around 1300 C.E. who subdued them. The earliest settlements were definitely by Polynesians who traveled thousands of miles across the Pacific in canoes, bearing taro, breadfruit and pigs. Each island had its own chief (ali'i) and there was continuous warfare until Kamehameha I, in the early 1800s, with force and foreign weaponry united the Hawaiian Islands under his rule. The Kamehameha dynasty came to an end in 1872 with the death of Kamehameha V.\n\nAmerican commercial interests led to increasingly close ties with the United States, until an 1874 treaty between the United States and Hawaii gave the U.S. exclusive trading rights with Hawaii.\n\nIn 1898, the United States president William McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution which formalized the annexation of Hawaii by the United States.\n\nIn 1896, William McKinley succeeded Cleveland as president, and in 1898 the Hawaiian Islands were annexed. On February 22, 1900, Hawaii officially became Hawaii Territory, a United States territory.\n\nHawaii became the 50th state of the Union on August 21, 1959.\n\n== The Ukulele == \n\nThe ukulele (Hawaiian for \"jumping flea\") is the Hawaiian version of the ''cavaquinho'', a small guitar-like instrument brought to Hawaii by Portuguese immigrants. \n\n== Hawaii and Ukulele references in ''Vineland'' ==\n\n'''p.15'''<br />\nthe dress, Day Glo orange, near ultraviolet purple, some acid green, and a little magenta in a retro Hawaiian parrots and hula girls print\n\n'''p.56'''<br />\nAt the time he was working a Hawaiian cruise gig for Kahuna Airlines, a non-sked flying out of LAX's East Imperial Terminal, a gig he'd stumbled into in the turbulent last days of his marriage, out on one more desperate attempt, transpacific this time, to save the relationship, as he saw it, or, as she saw it, once again come messing with her privacy, red-eyeing in to Honolulu on a charter flight in an airplane of uncertain make [...]\n\n'''p.60'''<br />\n\"Hawaii is where men from California bring their broken hearts, seeking exotic forms of self-injury not so readily available on the mainland. Some specialize in active volcanoes, others in cliff diving, many go for the classier swimming-out-to-sea option.\n\n'''p.61'''<br />\nZoyd got up, put a white suit he'd borrowed from Scott Oof on over his Hawaiian shirt\n\n'''p.62'''<br />\nEach 747 in the Kahuna Airlines fleet had been gutted and refitted as a huge Hawaiian restaurant and bar, full of hanging island vegetation, nightclub chairs and tables instead of airplane seats, even a miniature waterfall. In-flight movies included Hawaii (1966), The Hawaiians (1970), and Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), among others. Zoyd was presented with a thick tattered fake book full of Hawaiian tunes, and on the lounge synthesizer, a Japanese make he'd heard of but never played, he found a ukulele option that would provide up to three orchestral sections of eight ukes each. It would take several flights across the Pacific Ocean and back before Zoyd felt easy with this by no means user-friendly instrument. The critter liked to drift off pitch on him, or worse, into that shrillness that sours the stomach, curtails seduction, poi- sons the careful ambience. Nothing he could find in the dash-one under the seat ever corrected what he more and more took to be conscious decisions by the machine.\n\n'''p.64'''<br />\nIn the plane, passengers milled among the resined hatch-cover tables, the plastic tikis and shrubbery, clutching their oversize paper-parasoled drinks, Zoyd attempting to keep up a medley of peppy tunes.\n\n'''p.65'''<br />\nHe saw somebody in a blond hippie haircut, floral bell-bottoms, and tropical shirt, with a dozen or so plastic leis piled up around his face and shoulders, plus some pitch-black goggle-style shades and a straw hat, holding a banjo-ukulele of between-the-wars vintage.\n\n'''pp.65-66'''<br />\n\"Man's after you, eh,\" smoothly, finding a lead sheet with, inevitably, uke diagrams on it. \"How about this?\"\n\n\"Uh-huh!\" the strange ukulelist replied. \"But it'd-be easier--in the key of G!\" Ukulele talk, all right, the new sideman proceeding to turn in a respectable rhythm job on the old Hawaiian favorite \"Wacky Coconuts,\"\n\n'''p.67'''<br />\nHe played a few bars on the uke.\n\n'''p.99'''<br />\na thin piping tune in three-part harmony, all sixteen bars of the theme from \"Hawaii Five-0\" [...] She shut off the music right after the part that goes,\n\n:Down in the streets of Honolu-lu,<br />\n:Just bookin' folks and bein' patched through, what a<br />\n:Lu-wow!. .. Hawa-<br />\n:Ii Five-Oh!\n\n'''p.133'''<br />\nWorkin' at the Daily Planet was the Man o' Steel's Hawaiian vacation\n\n'''p.161'''<br />\nNext day, feeling mysteriously better, he was back on the case, visiting widely separated Bay Area pharmacies with forged prescriptions for speed, purchasing a ukulele and the liver-and-blue suit he was wearing when Prairie met him [...]\n\n'''p.162'''<br />\nTakeshi reached into his bag to produce only the ukulele, gals, no problem, and strum a four-bar intro before singing, as certification he was harmless, JUST LIKE A WILLIAM POWELL\n\n'''p.290'''<br />\nHub with a uke from Hawaii singing \"Down Among the Sheltering Palms\"\n\n== Hawaiian References in other Thomas Pynchon Novels ==\n\n[http://www.thomaspynchon.com/hawaiian-vacations-pynchon.html References to the Hawaiian Islands and culture] are explored in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Hawaiian_Islands_and_Ukuleles ''Gravity's Rainbow''] and [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hawaii ''Against the Day'']. There is also more info at [http://www.thomaspynchon.com/hawaiian-vacations-pynchon.html ThomasPynchon.com].\n\n<!-- PLEASE DON'T REMOVE ... IT HELPS FUND THE PROJECT. THANKS! -->\n\n== Vacationing in Hawaii ==\n\n[http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com Hawaii is an ideal vacation spot]. You can usually find [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/oahu/oahu.html great vacation rentals in Oahu] as well as stunning [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/maui/maui.html oceanfront and beachfront rentals in Maui] any time of year. [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/kauai/kauai.html Vacations in Kauai], as well as [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/molokai/molokai.html Molokai] and [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/lanai/lanai.html Lanai] are the perfect antidote to the hectic American lifestyle, and [http://www.besthawaiianvacationrentals.com/big-island-hawaii/big-island.html beachfront vacation rentals on the Big Island of Hawaii] are almost always available."
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