Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

Chapter 14

2009-08-07T07:17:47Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 309 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 294==
'''"But when he found out about Prairie...something else, something from his nightmares of forced procreation, must have taken over, because later, in what could only be crippled judgment, Brock was to turn and go after the baby and, noticing Zoyd in the way, arrange for his removal too."''' 
This explains Vond's attack on Zoyd in [[Chapter 4]] -- but note how "crippled judgment" buys off Pynchon's lack of clear motivation for this series of events.

'''A great joke about the huge brick of weed that Zuniga plants at Zoyd's pad. "Let me guess," says Zoyd, thinking of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's monolith, "2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]." "Try 20,000 Years In Sing Sing [1933]," replies Zuniga.''' 
This joke is especially funny because both titles include numbers, and because both guys include scholarly references to the years the films were made. (Pynchon, of course, has been doing this throughout, but this is the first time he does it in dialogue).

A monolith of pot also appears in ''Inherent Vice''. See [http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#Page_33 pg. 33].

==Page 297==
'''"Following the wisdom of the time"''' 
Pynchon refers, with vague disapproval, to the touchie-feelie California notion that men should "get in touch with their feelings" and, presumably, cry their little hearts out. However, Zoyd, who has gotten used to crying, is finding out that, in fact, big boys don't cry.

'''"Museum of Drug Abuse"''' 
Sure, Pynchon.

==Page 298==
'''"gnathic index"''' 
In craniology, the ratio of the distance from basion to prosthion to the distance from basion to nasion, expressed as a percent of the latter. Aren't you glad you asked?

'''"I know how to take care of Frenesi, asshole..."''' 
Vond is unbearably cruel and sadistic in this interview with Zoyd. Unlike the hero of "Leader of the Pack," the lyrics to which Pynchon uses for a joke on p. 270, Vond is both bad and evil. What an asshole! And he really hates hippies presumably for being childish. But who's really being childish here?

==Page 299==
'''"who feared nothing unless it was taking apart a transmission"''' 
Vond's Scorpiopic self-destructiveness is compared to that of the "beer outlaws" of Zoyd's youth ([[Chapter 4#Page 37|see page 37]]). This observation is quite accurate: Only advanced automotive nerds can take transmissions apart (and get them back together again).

'''"those rectal spasms of fear"''' 
Zoyd once again experiences this not-so-leit-but-definitely-motif in ''Vineland''. (See also pages [[Chapter 1#Page 10|10]], [[Chapter 4#Page 45|45]], [[Chapter 8#Page 116|116]], [[Chapter 11#Page 207|207]].)

==Page 300==
'''"Not the Earth Brock was acquainted with"''' 
A great line!

'''"...squealing, screaming guitar solos that defied any number of rules, that also lifted the blood and reassured the soul..."''' 
Could be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_hendrix Jimi Hendrix]. Or a description of ''Vineland''. But mainly it gives Zoyd an idea that the "real" world still exists, and so will he.

==Page 301==
'''"she calls up one night..."''' 
Vond seems interested in making sure that Frenesi won't be able to find Zoyd and Prairie. Of course this is contradicted by the "public act of craziness" that Vond has insisted Zoyd perform.

'''"I have her power of attorney, she gave me that even before she gave me her body..."''' 
That is, Frenesi surrendered her identity to Vond first; bondage before intercourse. There's a distant echo here of Mississippi bluesman [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29 Robert Johnson's] "Traveling Riverside Blues": "She got a mortgage on my body, now, and a lien on my soul."

==Page 302==
'''"the count at 5:30 AM"''' 
Body count, that is a basic security measure in prisons.

==Page 303==
'''"EPT"''' 
Very likely El Paso, Texas. Pynchon has a scene in [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677 Against the Day] set in El Paso, and even refers to the city by the same initials.

'''"Agustin Lara tunes"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Lara Augustin Lara] was born in Mexico City in 1896. He began composing songs in 1929, influenced by the popular dances and jazz forms of the 1930s and 40s. He composed well over 400 songs, many of them written for Mexican films. His best known song is probably "Granada." Lara died in 1970.

==Page 303==
'''"conjunto"''' 
Spanish for "small band," or "combo."

'''"los vatos de Chiques"''' 
"Chicano dudes."

==Page 306==
'''R. Crumb''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Crumb R. Crumb] is an American illustrator, author of subversive comics. He founded the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_comix Underground Comix] movement, which wanted to distinguish itself from mainstream comics by including subversive, sexually taboo, and counter-cultural material. Crumb is the subject of a fascinating documentary called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumb_(film) Crumb] (1994).

==Page 307==
'''"Prairie kept waking up every couple hours, all the way back to her old baby ways."''' 
This is true baby stuff. Is Pynchon a daddy? Consider also all the baby details, and Prairie's teenagerhood. This is hard stuff to get from a book, but with Pynchon's genius for bringing research alive you never know.

'''"Mucho Maas"''' 
A pun, of course, on "mucho mas" ("much more", in Spanish). Also (and also "of course") ex-husband of Oedipa Maas, and one of the main characters in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''], in which Mucho is a DJ disgusted by his former incarnation as a used car salesman for a group called N.A.D.A., and becomes dependent on LSD.

==Page 308==
'''"Paranoids concert at the Fillmore"''' 
[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''] fans will recall that Mucho's ex, Oedipa, was briefly hung up on Miles, lead singer of this pre-punk group.

'''"absquatulation"''' 
Absquatulate is a coined word, apparently meaning to make off, or decamp. It also makes an appearance in Pynchon's 2006 novel [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Against the Day''].

==Page 309==
'''"guest stash"''' 
A special supply of smoke for visitors was not uncommon in the houses of serious weedheads at this time. However, since Zoyd can't find the guest stash at Mucho's house he has to roll his own. Bummer!

'''Charles Manson''' 
Although Manson is most famous for the horrible murders committed by his followers, he was, at one time, an aspiring musician. He even hung out with the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson for a time and a recording of his music was released after his trial.

'''Tiny Tim''' 
An eccentric folk singer who played the ukulele and sang in a strangely beautiful falsetto voice. He's most famous for his version of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." He also shows up in ''Inherent Vice''.

==Page 310==
'''"unforeseen passion"''' 
A good description of Mucho's love for cocaine.

'''"Dr. Hugo Splanchnick"''' 
The entire Splanchnick sequence is immensely funny, including Pynchon's use of "snoot croaker" to describe the doc's specialty.

==Page 311==
'''"stop-me-search-me VW bus"''' 
The epitome of Sixties California hippie culture, which (wonderful to say) continues to survive, everywhere, to this very day.

'''"'Aw' said the dopers, the speech balloon emerging from their tailpipe" All of a sudden, we're in 'toontown.

==Page 312==
'''"...me entiendes como te digo?"''' 
Spanish for "Unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

'''"I guess it's over..."''' 
It seems likely that this is Pynchon delivering the "nut paragraph," as journalists call the central idea in a story. This dialogue seems heartfelt -- especially the stuff about the tube ("keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for,") and rock 'n' roll ("just another way to claim our attention,") and "Soon they're gonna be coming after everything, not just drugs but beer, cigarettes, sugar, salt, fat, you name it, anything that could remotely please any of your senses...," and "It was the way people used to talk." Yes, it was.

==Page 313==
'''"Please go careful, Zoyd"''' 
Mucho has made much the same settlement with the establishment that Hub Gates has: joined the approved union, settled down, stopped making a fuss.

==Page 314==
'''"Enjoy it while you can, while you're light enough for that glass to hold you."''' 
Prairie on top of the Hip Trip pinball machine is a marvelous image capturing the fragility of the moment, the certainty of loss, age, death.

'''"Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge represents a transition, in the metaphysics of the region"''' 
Great intro to Zoyd in Vineland.

==Page 320==
'''"spool tenders, zooglers, water bucks and bull punchers"''' 
Logging jobs.

==Page 321==
'''"Many would be the former tripping partners and old flames who came over the years to deal with each other this way across desktops or through computer terminals, as if chosen in secret and sorted into opposing teams...."''' 
Some folks get on Welfare, and others administer it. Another incarnation of the binary/preterite metaphor.

{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 5

2009-08-05T19:59:01Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 60 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 56==
'''"Kahuna Airlines"''' 
A reference to those silly AIP beach party movies in which Frankie Avalon was "The Big Kahuna." ''Kahuna'' was the Hawaiian title for a priest, expert, teacher, and/or adviser, and the term is still used in that context by native Hawaiians. A ''kahuna nui'' was a high priest.

==Page 57==
''' "Feel like Mildred Pierce's husband, Bert"''' 
Another movie reference, this time to a 1945 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Crawford Joan Crawford] movie, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Pierce ''Mildred Pierce''], based on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cain James M. Cain's] novel.

==Page 58==
'''"ankling"''' 
Variety show-biz usage, meaning to walk out of, or quit. It's very appropriate for Sasha with her film-biz background.

==Page 59==
'''"those eyes of blue painted blue, as the Italian oldie goes..."''' 
The oldie, which is "Volare," goes, "nel blu, nel pinto di blu," or however it's spelled in Italian.

'''"on the astral night flights he would make to be near and haunt her as best he knew how..."''' 
As Zoyd describes to Prairie ([[Chapter 4#Page 40|p. 40]]). A sad, moving rendition of lost love.

==Page 60==
'''"sex fantasy...[or] ex fantasy"''' 
Always ready for a play on words, that Pynchon.

'''Hawaii . . . Suicide Fantasy Packages''' 
For another scene of love sick men wanting to commit suicide in Hawaii, see [http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_12#191''Inherent Vice'', pg. 191.]

'''"Book him, Danno..."''' 
Zoyd's suicide fantasy features a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_5-O Hawaii 5-0] denouement. Most episodes of ''Hawaii Five-O'' ended with the arrest of criminals with McGarrett's catch phrase to Williams, "Book 'em, Danno!" with the offense occasionally added after this phrase, such as "-Murder one!". The Tube forces us to look at the real world via its pre-packaged perceptions. (Incidentally, the ''Hawaii 5-0'' theme surfaces at least two other places -- including the tune played by Takeshi's electronic Giri card.)

==Page 61==
'''"zoot-suit effect"''' 
Pynchon is still hung up on these baggy zoots, which were radical black/Latino fashion statements in the early-mid forties. Read more about 'em in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

'''"gig of death"''' 
Typical Pynchonian mysterioso.

==Page 62==
'''"dash-one"''' 
Military slang for the user manual. A common element in Pynchon's work is his peppering of slang phrases and references stemming, presumably, from his two years in the US Navy.

==Page 65==
'''"Takeshi"''' 
Pynchon is fond of transplanting characters from one novel to another. Takeshi Fumimoto is a perfect example. He made his first appearance as a bit player in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] where he was one of a pair of wacky kamikaze pilots. His first name is almost surely borrowed from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takashi_Shimura Takashi Shimura], the star of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla ''Godzilla''] -- a film referenced in the very same sentence, when Zoyd plays the ''Godzilla'' theme music to accompany Takeshi's first appearance. (Pynchon seems to have been thinking about this beast for some time: There's a boat named Godzilla II in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''] -- and the word is that he loves Japanese horror flicks. In fact, at one point rumor had it that he was writing a book with Mothra as a major character.)

{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 14

2009-08-04T20:40:30Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 294 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 294==
'''"But when he found out about Prairie...something else, something from his nightmares of forced procreation, must have taken over, because later, in what could only be crippled judgment, Brock was to turn and go after the baby and, noticing Zoyd in the way, arrange for his removal too."''' 
This explains Vond's attack on Zoyd in [[Chapter 4]] -- but note how "crippled judgment" buys off Pynchon's lack of clear motivation for this series of events.

'''A great joke about the huge brick of weed that Zuniga plants at Zoyd's pad. "Let me guess," says Zoyd, thinking of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's monolith, "2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]." "Try 20,000 Years In Sing Sing [1933]," replies Zuniga.''' 
This joke is especially funny because both titles include numbers, and because both guys include scholarly references to the years the films were made. (Pynchon, of course, has been doing this throughout, but this is the first time he does it in dialogue).

A monolith of pot also appears in ''Inherent Vice''. See [http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#Page_33 pg. 33].

==Page 297==
'''"Following the wisdom of the time"''' 
Pynchon refers, with vague disapproval, to the touchie-feelie California notion that men should "get in touch with their feelings" and, presumably, cry their little hearts out. However, Zoyd, who has gotten used to crying, is finding out that, in fact, big boys don't cry.

'''"Museum of Drug Abuse"''' 
Sure, Pynchon.

==Page 298==
'''"gnathic index"''' 
In craniology, the ratio of the distance from basion to prosthion to the distance from basion to nasion, expressed as a percent of the latter. Aren't you glad you asked?

'''"I know how to take care of Frenesi, asshole..."''' 
Vond is unbearably cruel and sadistic in this interview with Zoyd. Unlike the hero of "Leader of the Pack," the lyrics to which Pynchon uses for a joke on p. 270, Vond is both bad and evil. What an asshole! And he really hates hippies presumably for being childish. But who's really being childish here?

==Page 299==
'''"who feared nothing unless it was taking apart a transmission"''' 
Vond's Scorpiopic self-destructiveness is compared to that of the "beer outlaws" of Zoyd's youth ([[Chapter 4#Page 37|see page 37]]). This observation is quite accurate: Only advanced automotive nerds can take transmissions apart (and get them back together again).

'''"those rectal spasms of fear"''' 
Zoyd once again experiences this not-so-leit-but-definitely-motif in ''Vineland''. (See also pages [[Chapter 1#Page 10|10]], [[Chapter 4#Page 45|45]], [[Chapter 8#Page 116|116]], [[Chapter 11#Page 207|207]].)

==Page 300==
'''"Not the Earth Brock was acquainted with"''' 
A great line!

'''"...squealing, screaming guitar solos that defied any number of rules, that also lifted the blood and reassured the soul..."''' 
Could be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_hendrix Jimi Hendrix]. Or a description of ''Vineland''. But mainly it gives Zoyd an idea that the "real" world still exists, and so will he.

==Page 301==
'''"she calls up one night..."''' 
Vond seems interested in making sure that Frenesi won't be able to find Zoyd and Prairie. Of course this is contradicted by the "public act of craziness" that Vond has insisted Zoyd perform.

'''"I have her power of attorney, she gave me that even before she gave me her body..."''' 
That is, Frenesi surrendered her identity to Vond first; bondage before intercourse. There's a distant echo here of Mississippi bluesman [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29 Robert Johnson's] "Traveling Riverside Blues": "She got a mortgage on my body, now, and a lien on my soul."

==Page 302==
'''"the count at 5:30 AM"''' 
Body count, that is a basic security measure in prisons.

==Page 303==
'''"EPT"''' 
Very likely El Paso, Texas. Pynchon has a scene in [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677 Against the Day] set in El Paso, and even refers to the city by the same initials.

'''"Agustin Lara tunes"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Lara Augustin Lara] was born in Mexico City in 1896. He began composing songs in 1929, influenced by the popular dances and jazz forms of the 1930s and 40s. He composed well over 400 songs, many of them written for Mexican films. His best known song is probably "Granada." Lara died in 1970.

==Page 303==
'''"conjunto"''' 
Spanish for "small band," or "combo."

'''"los vatos de Chiques"''' 
"Chicano dudes."

==Page 306==
'''R. Crumb''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Crumb R. Crumb] is an American illustrator, author of subversive comics. He founded the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_comix Underground Comix] movement, which wanted to distinguish itself from mainstream comics by including subversive, sexually taboo, and counter-cultural material. Crumb is the subject of a fascinating documentary called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumb_(film) Crumb] (1994).

==Page 307==
'''"Prairie kept waking up every couple hours, all the way back to her old baby ways."''' 
This is true baby stuff. Is Pynchon a daddy? Consider also all the baby details, and Prairie's teenagerhood. This is hard stuff to get from a book, but with Pynchon's genius for bringing research alive you never know.

'''"Mucho Maas"''' 
A pun, of course, on "mucho mas" ("much more", in Spanish). Also (and also "of course") ex-husband of Oedipa Maas, and one of the main characters in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''], in which Mucho is a DJ disgusted by his former incarnation as a used car salesman for a group called N.A.D.A., and becomes dependent on LSD.

==Page 308==
'''"Paranoids concert at the Fillmore"''' 
[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''] fans will recall that Mucho's ex, Oedipa, was briefly hung up on Miles, lead singer of this pre-punk group.

'''"absquatulation"''' 
Absquatulate is a coined word, apparently meaning to make off, or decamp. It also makes an appearance in Pynchon's 2006 novel [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Against the Day''].

==Page 309==
'''"guest stash"''' 
A special supply of smoke for visitors was not uncommon in the houses of serious weedheads at this time. However, since Zoyd can't find the guest stash at Mucho's house he has to roll his own. Bummer!

'''Charles Manson''' 
Although Manson is most famous for the horrible murders committed by his followers, he was, at one time, an aspiring musician. He even hung out with the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson for a time and a recording of his music was released after his trial.

'''Tiny Tim''' 
An eccentric folk singer who played the ukulele and sang in a strangely beautiful falsetto voice. He's most famous for his version of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."

==Page 310==
'''"unforeseen passion"''' 
A good description of Mucho's love for cocaine.

'''"Dr. Hugo Splanchnick"''' 
The entire Splanchnick sequence is immensely funny, including Pynchon's use of "snoot croaker" to describe the doc's specialty.

==Page 311==
'''"stop-me-search-me VW bus"''' 
The epitome of Sixties California hippie culture, which (wonderful to say) continues to survive, everywhere, to this very day.

'''"'Aw' said the dopers, the speech balloon emerging from their tailpipe" All of a sudden, we're in 'toontown.

==Page 312==
'''"...me entiendes como te digo?"''' 
Spanish for "Unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

'''"I guess it's over..."''' 
It seems likely that this is Pynchon delivering the "nut paragraph," as journalists call the central idea in a story. This dialogue seems heartfelt -- especially the stuff about the tube ("keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for,") and rock 'n' roll ("just another way to claim our attention,") and "Soon they're gonna be coming after everything, not just drugs but beer, cigarettes, sugar, salt, fat, you name it, anything that could remotely please any of your senses...," and "It was the way people used to talk." Yes, it was.

==Page 313==
'''"Please go careful, Zoyd"''' 
Mucho has made much the same settlement with the establishment that Hub Gates has: joined the approved union, settled down, stopped making a fuss.

==Page 314==
'''"Enjoy it while you can, while you're light enough for that glass to hold you."''' 
Prairie on top of the Hip Trip pinball machine is a marvelous image capturing the fragility of the moment, the certainty of loss, age, death.

'''"Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge represents a transition, in the metaphysics of the region"''' 
Great intro to Zoyd in Vineland.

==Page 320==
'''"spool tenders, zooglers, water bucks and bull punchers"''' 
Logging jobs.

==Page 321==
'''"Many would be the former tripping partners and old flames who came over the years to deal with each other this way across desktops or through computer terminals, as if chosen in secret and sorted into opposing teams...."''' 
Some folks get on Welfare, and others administer it. Another incarnation of the binary/preterite metaphor.

{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 14

2009-07-22T23:20:00Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 309 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 294==
'''"But when he found out about Prairie...something else, something from his nightmares of forced procreation, must have taken over, because later, in what could only be crippled judgment, Brock was to turn and go after the baby and, noticing Zoyd in the way, arrange for his removal too."''' 
This explains Vond's attack on Zoyd in [[Chapter 4]] -- but note how "crippled judgment" buys off Pynchon's lack of clear motivation for this series of events.

'''A great joke about the huge brick of weed that Zuniga plants at Zoyd's pad. "Let me guess," says Zoyd, thinking of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's monolith, "2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]." "Try 20,000 Years In Sing Sing [1933]," replies Zuniga.''' 
This joke is especially funny because both titles include numbers, and because both guys include scholarly references to the years the films were made. (Pynchon, of course, has been doing this throughout, but this is the first time he does it in dialogue).

==Page 297==
'''"Following the wisdom of the time"''' 
Pynchon refers, with vague disapproval, to the touchie-feelie California notion that men should "get in touch with their feelings" and, presumably, cry their little hearts out. However, Zoyd, who has gotten used to crying, is finding out that, in fact, big boys don't cry.

'''"Museum of Drug Abuse"''' 
Sure, Pynchon.

==Page 298==
'''"gnathic index"''' 
In craniology, the ratio of the distance from basion to prosthion to the distance from basion to nasion, expressed as a percent of the latter. Aren't you glad you asked?

'''"I know how to take care of Frenesi, asshole..."''' 
Vond is unbearably cruel and sadistic in this interview with Zoyd. Unlike the hero of "Leader of the Pack," the lyrics to which Pynchon uses for a joke on p. 270, Vond is both bad and evil. What an asshole! And he really hates hippies presumably for being childish. But who's really being childish here?

==Page 299==
'''"who feared nothing unless it was taking apart a transmission"''' 
Vond's Scorpiopic self-destructiveness is compared to that of the "beer outlaws" of Zoyd's youth ([[Chapter 4#Page 37|see page 37]]). This observation is quite accurate: Only advanced automotive nerds can take transmissions apart (and get them back together again).

'''"those rectal spasms of fear"''' 
Zoyd once again experiences this not-so-leit-but-definitely-motif in ''Vineland''. (See also pages [[Chapter 1#Page 10|10]], [[Chapter 4#Page 45|45]], [[Chapter 8#Page 116|116]], [[Chapter 11#Page 207|207]].)

==Page 300==
'''"Not the Earth Brock was acquainted with"''' 
A great line!

'''"...squealing, screaming guitar solos that defied any number of rules, that also lifted the blood and reassured the soul..."''' 
Could be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_hendrix Jimi Hendrix]. Or a description of ''Vineland''. But mainly it gives Zoyd an idea that the "real" world still exists, and so will he.

==Page 301==
'''"she calls up one night..."''' 
Vond seems interested in making sure that Frenesi won't be able to find Zoyd and Prairie. Of course this is contradicted by the "public act of craziness" that Vond has insisted Zoyd perform.

'''"I have her power of attorney, she gave me that even before she gave me her body..."''' 
That is, Frenesi surrendered her identity to Vond first; bondage before intercourse. There's a distant echo here of Mississippi bluesman [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29 Robert Johnson's] "Traveling Riverside Blues": "She got a mortgage on my body, now, and a lien on my soul."

==Page 302==
'''"the count at 5:30 AM"''' 
Body count, that is a basic security measure in prisons.

==Page 303==
'''"EPT"''' 
Very likely El Paso, Texas. Pynchon has a scene in [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677 Against the Day] set in El Paso, and even refers to the city by the same initials.

'''"Agustin Lara tunes"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Lara Augustin Lara] was born in Mexico City in 1896. He began composing songs in 1929, influenced by the popular dances and jazz forms of the 1930s and 40s. He composed well over 400 songs, many of them written for Mexican films. His best known song is probably "Granada." Lara died in 1970.

==Page 303==
'''"conjunto"''' 
Spanish for "small band," or "combo."

'''"los vatos de Chiques"''' 
"Chicano dudes."

==Page 306==
'''R. Crumb''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Crumb R. Crumb] is an American illustrator, author of subversive comics. He founded the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_comix Underground Comix] movement, which wanted to distinguish itself from mainstream comics by including subversive, sexually taboo, and counter-cultural material. Crumb is the subject of a fascinating documentary called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumb_(film) Crumb] (1994).

==Page 307==
'''"Prairie kept waking up every couple hours, all the way back to her old baby ways."''' 
This is true baby stuff. Is Pynchon a daddy? Consider also all the baby details, and Prairie's teenagerhood. This is hard stuff to get from a book, but with Pynchon's genius for bringing research alive you never know.

'''"Mucho Maas"''' 
A pun, of course, on "mucho mas" ("much more", in Spanish). Also (and also "of course") ex-husband of Oedipa Maas, and one of the main characters in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''], in which Mucho is a DJ disgusted by his former incarnation as a used car salesman for a group called N.A.D.A., and becomes dependent on LSD.

==Page 308==
'''"Paranoids concert at the Fillmore"''' 
[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''] fans will recall that Mucho's ex, Oedipa, was briefly hung up on Miles, lead singer of this pre-punk group.

'''"absquatulation"''' 
Absquatulate is a coined word, apparently meaning to make off, or decamp. It also makes an appearance in Pynchon's 2006 novel [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Against the Day''].

==Page 309==
'''"guest stash"''' 
A special supply of smoke for visitors was not uncommon in the houses of serious weedheads at this time. However, since Zoyd can't find the guest stash at Mucho's house he has to roll his own. Bummer!

'''Charles Manson''' 
Although Manson is most famous for the horrible murders committed by his followers, he was, at one time, an aspiring musician. He even hung out with the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson for a time and a recording of his music was released after his trial.

'''Tiny Tim''' 
An eccentric folk singer who played the ukulele and sang in a strangely beautiful falsetto voice. He's most famous for his version of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."

==Page 310==
'''"unforeseen passion"''' 
A good description of Mucho's love for cocaine.

'''"Dr. Hugo Splanchnick"''' 
The entire Splanchnick sequence is immensely funny, including Pynchon's use of "snoot croaker" to describe the doc's specialty.

==Page 311==
'''"stop-me-search-me VW bus"''' 
The epitome of Sixties California hippie culture, which (wonderful to say) continues to survive, everywhere, to this very day.

'''"'Aw' said the dopers, the speech balloon emerging from their tailpipe" All of a sudden, we're in 'toontown.

==Page 312==
'''"...me entiendes como te digo?"''' 
Spanish for "Unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

'''"I guess it's over..."''' 
It seems likely that this is Pynchon delivering the "nut paragraph," as journalists call the central idea in a story. This dialogue seems heartfelt -- especially the stuff about the tube ("keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for,") and rock 'n' roll ("just another way to claim our attention,") and "Soon they're gonna be coming after everything, not just drugs but beer, cigarettes, sugar, salt, fat, you name it, anything that could remotely please any of your senses...," and "It was the way people used to talk." Yes, it was.

==Page 313==
'''"Please go careful, Zoyd"''' 
Mucho has made much the same settlement with the establishment that Hub Gates has: joined the approved union, settled down, stopped making a fuss.

==Page 314==
'''"Enjoy it while you can, while you're light enough for that glass to hold you."''' 
Prairie on top of the Hip Trip pinball machine is a marvelous image capturing the fragility of the moment, the certainty of loss, age, death.

'''"Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge represents a transition, in the metaphysics of the region"''' 
Great intro to Zoyd in Vineland.

==Page 320==
'''"spool tenders, zooglers, water bucks and bull punchers"''' 
Logging jobs.

==Page 321==
'''"Many would be the former tripping partners and old flames who came over the years to deal with each other this way across desktops or through computer terminals, as if chosen in secret and sorted into opposing teams...."''' 
Some folks get on Welfare, and others administer it. Another incarnation of the binary/preterite metaphor.

{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 14

2009-07-22T23:11:43Z

Hugo Ball:

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 294==
'''"But when he found out about Prairie...something else, something from his nightmares of forced procreation, must have taken over, because later, in what could only be crippled judgment, Brock was to turn and go after the baby and, noticing Zoyd in the way, arrange for his removal too."''' 
This explains Vond's attack on Zoyd in [[Chapter 4]] -- but note how "crippled judgment" buys off Pynchon's lack of clear motivation for this series of events.

'''A great joke about the huge brick of weed that Zuniga plants at Zoyd's pad. "Let me guess," says Zoyd, thinking of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's monolith, "2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]." "Try 20,000 Years In Sing Sing [1933]," replies Zuniga.''' 
This joke is especially funny because both titles include numbers, and because both guys include scholarly references to the years the films were made. (Pynchon, of course, has been doing this throughout, but this is the first time he does it in dialogue).

==Page 297==
'''"Following the wisdom of the time"''' 
Pynchon refers, with vague disapproval, to the touchie-feelie California notion that men should "get in touch with their feelings" and, presumably, cry their little hearts out. However, Zoyd, who has gotten used to crying, is finding out that, in fact, big boys don't cry.

'''"Museum of Drug Abuse"''' 
Sure, Pynchon.

==Page 298==
'''"gnathic index"''' 
In craniology, the ratio of the distance from basion to prosthion to the distance from basion to nasion, expressed as a percent of the latter. Aren't you glad you asked?

'''"I know how to take care of Frenesi, asshole..."''' 
Vond is unbearably cruel and sadistic in this interview with Zoyd. Unlike the hero of "Leader of the Pack," the lyrics to which Pynchon uses for a joke on p. 270, Vond is both bad and evil. What an asshole! And he really hates hippies presumably for being childish. But who's really being childish here?

==Page 299==
'''"who feared nothing unless it was taking apart a transmission"''' 
Vond's Scorpiopic self-destructiveness is compared to that of the "beer outlaws" of Zoyd's youth ([[Chapter 4#Page 37|see page 37]]). This observation is quite accurate: Only advanced automotive nerds can take transmissions apart (and get them back together again).

'''"those rectal spasms of fear"''' 
Zoyd once again experiences this not-so-leit-but-definitely-motif in ''Vineland''. (See also pages [[Chapter 1#Page 10|10]], [[Chapter 4#Page 45|45]], [[Chapter 8#Page 116|116]], [[Chapter 11#Page 207|207]].)

==Page 300==
'''"Not the Earth Brock was acquainted with"''' 
A great line!

'''"...squealing, screaming guitar solos that defied any number of rules, that also lifted the blood and reassured the soul..."''' 
Could be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_hendrix Jimi Hendrix]. Or a description of ''Vineland''. But mainly it gives Zoyd an idea that the "real" world still exists, and so will he.

==Page 301==
'''"she calls up one night..."''' 
Vond seems interested in making sure that Frenesi won't be able to find Zoyd and Prairie. Of course this is contradicted by the "public act of craziness" that Vond has insisted Zoyd perform.

'''"I have her power of attorney, she gave me that even before she gave me her body..."''' 
That is, Frenesi surrendered her identity to Vond first; bondage before intercourse. There's a distant echo here of Mississippi bluesman [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29 Robert Johnson's] "Traveling Riverside Blues": "She got a mortgage on my body, now, and a lien on my soul."

==Page 302==
'''"the count at 5:30 AM"''' 
Body count, that is a basic security measure in prisons.

==Page 303==
'''"EPT"''' 
Very likely El Paso, Texas. Pynchon has a scene in [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677 Against the Day] set in El Paso, and even refers to the city by the same initials.

'''"Agustin Lara tunes"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Lara Augustin Lara] was born in Mexico City in 1896. He began composing songs in 1929, influenced by the popular dances and jazz forms of the 1930s and 40s. He composed well over 400 songs, many of them written for Mexican films. His best known song is probably "Granada." Lara died in 1970.

==Page 303==
'''"conjunto"''' 
Spanish for "small band," or "combo."

'''"los vatos de Chiques"''' 
"Chicano dudes."

==Page 306==
'''R. Crumb''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Crumb R. Crumb] is an American illustrator, author of subversive comics. He founded the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_comix Underground Comix] movement, which wanted to distinguish itself from mainstream comics by including subversive, sexually taboo, and counter-cultural material. Crumb is the subject of a fascinating documentary called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumb_(film) Crumb] (1994).

==Page 307==
'''"Prairie kept waking up every couple hours, all the way back to her old baby ways."''' 
This is true baby stuff. Is Pynchon a daddy? Consider also all the baby details, and Prairie's teenagerhood. This is hard stuff to get from a book, but with Pynchon's genius for bringing research alive you never know.

'''"Mucho Maas"''' 
A pun, of course, on "mucho mas" ("much more", in Spanish). Also (and also "of course") ex-husband of Oedipa Maas, and one of the main characters in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''], in which Mucho is a DJ disgusted by his former incarnation as a used car salesman for a group called N.A.D.A., and becomes dependent on LSD.

==Page 308==
'''"Paranoids concert at the Fillmore"''' 
[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49''] fans will recall that Mucho's ex, Oedipa, was briefly hung up on Miles, lead singer of this pre-punk group.

'''"absquatulation"''' 
Absquatulate is a coined word, apparently meaning to make off, or decamp. It also makes an appearance in Pynchon's 2006 novel [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Against the Day''].

==Page 309==
'''"guest stash"''' 
A special supply of smoke for visitors was not uncommon in the houses of serious weedheads at this time. However, since Zoyd can't find the guest stash at Mucho's house he has to roll his own. Bummer!

==Page 310==
'''"unforeseen passion"''' 
A good description of Mucho's love for cocaine.

'''"Dr. Hugo Splanchnick"''' 
The entire Splanchnick sequence is immensely funny, including Pynchon's use of "snoot croaker" to describe the doc's specialty.

==Page 311==
'''"stop-me-search-me VW bus"''' 
The epitome of Sixties California hippie culture, which (wonderful to say) continues to survive, everywhere, to this very day.

'''"'Aw' said the dopers, the speech balloon emerging from their tailpipe" All of a sudden, we're in 'toontown.

==Page 312==
'''"...me entiendes como te digo?"''' 
Spanish for "Unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

'''"I guess it's over..."''' 
It seems likely that this is Pynchon delivering the "nut paragraph," as journalists call the central idea in a story. This dialogue seems heartfelt -- especially the stuff about the tube ("keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for,") and rock 'n' roll ("just another way to claim our attention,") and "Soon they're gonna be coming after everything, not just drugs but beer, cigarettes, sugar, salt, fat, you name it, anything that could remotely please any of your senses...," and "It was the way people used to talk." Yes, it was.

==Page 313==
'''"Please go careful, Zoyd"''' 
Mucho has made much the same settlement with the establishment that Hub Gates has: joined the approved union, settled down, stopped making a fuss.

==Page 314==
'''"Enjoy it while you can, while you're light enough for that glass to hold you."''' 
Prairie on top of the Hip Trip pinball machine is a marvelous image capturing the fragility of the moment, the certainty of loss, age, death.

'''"Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge represents a transition, in the metaphysics of the region"''' 
Great intro to Zoyd in Vineland.

==Page 320==
'''"spool tenders, zooglers, water bucks and bull punchers"''' 
Logging jobs.

==Page 321==
'''"Many would be the former tripping partners and old flames who came over the years to deal with each other this way across desktops or through computer terminals, as if chosen in secret and sorted into opposing teams...."''' 
Some folks get on Welfare, and others administer it. Another incarnation of the binary/preterite metaphor.

{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 9

2009-07-22T22:57:49Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 166 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 130==
'''"Fresson process studio photograph"''' 
Photographic printing process that uses coal to produce paper prints with a unique luminosity and grain. Fresson printing produces an image that is characteristically diffused and subtle, reminiscent of the "pointillism" of Impressionist painting. The image is extremely stable; Fresson printing is considered the most archival of any color procedure in use today.

==Page 131==
'''"If you want real ninja product..."''' 
The whole sequence about hiring an assassin is pure cyberpunk schtick.

'''"The Vibrating Palm"''' 
This may be a subtle reference to the old joke-store "buzzer" or "shocker" -- and resonates nicely with the rubber scampi on the previous page.

'''"YakMaf"''' 
Yakuza/Mafia.

==Page 133==
'''"legendary in the dopers' community"''' 
Olympic Boulevard, in Los Angeles, is a major arterial road stretching from 4th Street on the western end of Santa Monica to East Los Angeles -- farther than Wilshire Boulevard and most other streets. Why is the gas station toilet legendary? And why would DL care anyway? All she needs to do is change into her disguise.

In his 2009 psychedelic noir novel ''Inherent Vice'', Pynchon mentions another legendary restroom near Los Angeles:

:"the notorious Oscar's, right across the border from Tijuana, where the toilets were seething round the clock with junkies new and old who'd just scored in Mexico, put the product inside rubber balloons and swallowed them, then crossed back into the U.S. to vomit them back up again." (p.37)

Because this restroom is right across the border, it's not the "legendary" toilet on Olympic Boulevard.

'''"baby-blue shadows..."''' 
Nice description and a precursor to the color of Frenesi's eyes.

==Page 134==
'''"beige hose, white underwear..."''' 
Pynchon's description of DL's Clark Kent outfits is surprisingly accurate, especially for a male. It's like giving the O-O (see note, [[Chapter_6#Page_79|p. 79]]) to a nice Midwestern girl, circa 1960.

==Page 135==
'''"She wasn't sure right away that being sold into white slavery would turn out to be at all beneficial as a career step..."''' 
The kidnap-and-auction sequence is good, fast-moving storytelling: breathless, tense, gripping, light on flashy effects. This is also familiar cyberpunk territory, especially the interview with Wayvone.

==Page 136==
'''"older gentlemen with fingertip deficiencies..."''' 
Yakuza who have screwed up, and demonstrated their remorse by cutting off a fingertip.

==Page 139==
'''"Ufa, mi tratt' a pesci in faccia..."''' 
Literally, "Oof, you've thrown a fish in my face!" It's an ominous Sicilian warning meaning, "You've insulted me most unpleasantly, treated me in the worst possible way!"

==Page 141==
'''"I knew it!"''' 
Prairie breaking into the seamless narrative is almost a Brechtian alienation effect. By now the story is moving so strongly that we've totally forgotten the "as-told-to" frame.

'''"How could [Frenesi] have ever gone near somebody like this Brock guy?"''' 
Good question. Pynchon never really answers it -- unless we accept the idea of Frenesi embodying America's fatal fascination with authority.

'''"what-is-reality exercises"''' 
Reminiscent of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.

'''"Ninja Death Touch calculator"''' 
This joke strikes another false note. The entire sub-plot revolving around the Vibrating Palm is broad comedy, of course, but this smart-ass gag is severely out-of-scale.

==Page 142==
'''"might as well stay home -- watch a Run Run Shaw movie!"''' 
Hong-Kong-based Run-Run Shaw produced the popular (and violent) Bruce Lee karate flicks, also lots of action-packed swords and sorcery adventures (like the ones that clearly inspired a lot of the DL and Takeshi sub-plot).

'''"yellow headlamps of the tech squads..."''' 
The scene in the Footprint is reminiscent of the monolith excavation on the moon in 2001. Also, most of the Japanese dialogue is phrased in Pynchon's unique, sounds-just-like-a-movie style.

'''"...the shadowy world conglomerate Chipco..."''' 
This imaginary entity (an echo, perhaps of the sinister YoYoDyne Corporation in The Crying of Lot 49) is presumably some Intel-like company whose microprocessor chips are sold world wide. No doubt the chips are designed to keep a covert watch on everything, and report back to Chipco -- similar to Byron the Bulb and his fellow gridmates in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''"gigantic animal footprint"''' 
Godzilla's size is pretty well known, and this (as we shall see) sauroid footprint is too large to be that of the big G. However, Godzilla is a product of Japanese movie model technology of the fifties, so who knows what the eighties might bring?

'''"Wawazume Life & Non-Life"''' 
Is this a joke? And what kind? Maybe they insure things other than lives. Maybe Thanatoids get "non-life" insurance. Or it could just be a satirically "tactful" Japanese way of referring to death.

==Page 143==
'''"By the time...gods of the sky."''' 
Note that this immensely long and complicated sentence takes up more than half the page!

==Page 145==
'''"Singapore Sling"''' 
A frivolous cocktail with a pleasant flavor and a lethal punch: the signature drink of the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, a British colony taken by the Japanese in WWII. Conceivably, Minoru might have been stationed there, and picked up a liking for this tourist syrup.

==Page 146==
'''"Chuck, the world's most invisible robot"''' 
Like the fastest draw in the West. Want to see it again?

'''"some planet-wide struggle had been going on for years"''' 
More Pynchonian paranoia.

'''"the Himalayan caper"''' 
Story is written in mock Le Carre shorthand. Here (as elsewhere) Pynchon penetrates to the essence of a genre and gives us a few masterly strokes that evoke the same effect as an entire novel by a lesser writer.

'''"Semtex"''' 
For many years, Semtex has been the plastic explosive of choice for sophisticated aircraft bombers and other terrorists.

'''"pirate ships of the stratosphere"''' 
Presumably, they mount attacks like the one on the Kahuna flight.

==Page 147==
'''"Kutsushita-san!"''' 
lit. "Mr. Socks!"

'''"We called you the Kid."''' 
As in, "I never did the Kenosha Kid?" (See Gravity's Rainbow, p. 60.)

'''"disco music coming out the club doors"''' 
Cyberpunk atmosphere.

==Page 148==
'''"The Yak Doc Workshop"''' 
This may be a riff on Doc Yak, a comic book character.

'''"Takeshi...saw Vond...and thought...it was himself..."''' 
Vond and Takeshi look alike. Does this, as they say, signify? Takeshi as anti-Vond? It's hard to imagine a dark Japanese and a light Caucasian looking alike, but anyway, there's one for each of the tomatoes: an adjuster (insurance or karma, ma'am?) for DL, and a badass for Frenesi.

'''"''gaijin''"''' 
Japanese for foreigner, stranger, outsider.

==Page 149==
'''"Found a cab"''' 
Once again Prairie startles us by breaking into the gripping flashback narrative, but this time the present-tense Takeshi breaks in with her, having just arrived at the SKA retreat. Very cinematic. Takeshi moves instantaneously from past to present, a double-exposure match-dissolve effect.

'''"Moe!"''' 
The first of several references to [http://en.wikipedia.org/Three_stooges The Three Stooges], a nothing-if-not-preterite comedy trio specializing in crude, cruel slapstick.

'''"fingering its smooth rigid contours"''' 
The mock-porno is cute.

==Page 151==
'''"I couldn't see shit."''' 
DL mistakes Takeshi for Vond because of her fuzzy contact lenses. This mistaken-identity riff is worthy of Shakespeare at his most far-fetched and funny.

'''"Eeoo!"''' 
Flash! Pynchon's ear fails! This just isn't as close to the Valspeak expression of disgust as we expect from our boy. The transliteration needs a little more "u" or something.

==Page 153==
'''"Fuckin' Vond. He's the Roadrunner."''' 
Yes, he is.

==Page 154==
'''"Licensed DOM's"''' 
Doctor of Medicine?

==Page 155==
'''"Ninjette Coffee Mess"''' 
Navspeak. In the military, particularly the Navy, coffee mess is a little area where the coffee maker, cups, etc. are kept.

==Page 156==
'''"dorai kuriiningu"''' 
"dry cleaner" More Jive Japlish.

'''"perchloroethylene"''' 
A highly toxic chemical often used for cleaning movie film.

==Page 157==
'''"Not a bar, Fumimota-san."''' 
Silly joke, nicely placed.

==Page 158==
'''"Evoex"''' 
The etymology of this new tranquilizer is clearly from the bacchanalian ejaculation (and crossword puzzle word) "evoe!"

==Page 159==
'''"Michiko Yomama"''' 
A nasty pun, based on the black insult, "Yo' mama!" Let your guard down for a second, and the guy slips in one of these every time.

==Page 160==
'''"Nukey"''' 
Orgasm and atomic detonation meet in one of Pynchon's most awful/wonderful puns (nuke = nookey).

==Page 161==
'''"technically dead"''' 
Since Takeshi lives without fear, this makes him a perfect samurai, and echoes the idea on p. 29 about how a samurai is always prepared to die.

==Page 162==
'''"Just Like a William Powell"''' 
Echoes "Like a Meat Loaf" (p. 363), and, of course, Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."

==Page 163==
'''"Which reminds me, about your PX bill..."''' 
If you had any doubts about the samurai/ninjette subplot being for laughs, this page should convince you.

==Page 164==
'''"Puncutron"''' 
An imaginary therapeutic device whose name suggests an infernal combination of eastern medicine (acupuncture) and high-energy western technology (cyclotron). There's a bit of "punk" in there, too.

'''"Detractors included...managed to keep."''' 
A silly sentence, written in painful mock-German syntax for no discernible reason.

'''"Taiwanese Healthy Brain Aerobics"''' 
More foolishness, this time mixed with music. The selection of tapes for Puncutron listening includes The All-Regimental Bagpipes play Prime Time Favorites (the Tube again!), and perhaps Pynchon's best judgmental title: The Chipmunks Sing Marvin Hamlisch.

==Page 166==
'''Eve and her sister, Lilith''' 
According to an ancient legend, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith Lilith] was not Eve's sister but was Adam's first wife. But Lilith haunts many different fables, traditions, stories in many different cultures.

Lilith is the eponym for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith_Fair Lilith Fair], a music festival (1997-1999) of only female artists.

'''"...men convinced us that we were the natural administrators of this thing 'morality'..."''' 
Sister Rochelle's feminist Eden parable suggests an interesting modern scenario: Frenesi = Eve, DL = Lilith, Vond = Serpent. This would help explain Frenesi/America's irresistible attraction for the authoritarian Vond.

==Page 167==
'''"The Ordeal of the Thousand Broadway Show Tunes"''' 
Transcendental malarkey.

'''"YOUR MAMA EATS, how can we resist?"''' 
Aggro dining.

==Page 169==
'''"Cheapsat"''' 
Preterite communications personified.

==Page 170==
'''"Like Death, Only Different."''' 
While this is a nice definition of the "oid" suffix, it begs the question of exactly what Thanatoid's are.

'''"But we watch a lot of Tube"''' 
Thanatoids watch lots of TV, trying to advance further into the condition of death. This makes them Reaganite kids? Couch potatoes? Embittered hippies? Everyone in America? Anyway, advancing further into the condition of death is only a restatement of the law of entropy, which may mean that everyone in the universe is a Thanatoid.

==Page 171==
'''"checking the edges of the frame."''' 
Does this mean Takeshi's in a film? Or is Pynchon just grabbing a handy cinema term?

'''"go the opposite way! Back to life!"''' 
This anti-entropic movement makes Takeshi a great hero, a symbol of intelligence (the only truly anti-entropic entity), the life force.

==Page 172==
'''"Shade"''' 
(as in Shade Creek) = ghost.

'''"thick fluids in flexible containers"''' 
i.e., scumbags

'''"The Woodbine Motel"''' 
Harks back, perchance, to the 1870's, the Union Pacific railroad scandal, and the Credit Mobilier. When one party was asked, under oath, where the money was, he replied that it had "gone where the woodbine twineth."

'''"The Zero Inn"''' 
Very thanatoid, preterite and Zoyd-like. Also another zero.

==Page 173==
'''Thanatoids are "victims of karmic imbalances unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..."''' 
So are the Thanatoids victims of the Seventies? Or another version of the preterites in Gravity's Rainbow? Maybe they're just over-determined ghosts of some sort. This description is similar to the kind of thing that psychics talk about when they're trying to make your poltergeists go away; it's the unresolved baggage that keeps the ghosties on the move, and out of wherever they belong. Remember, too, that Shade Creek is "a psychic jumping-off town" where the Thanatoids wait "for the data necessary to pursue their needs and aims (i.e., ghostlike revenge) among the still living..." ([[#Page 171|p. 171]])

'''"Although the streets were irregular and steeply pitched..."''' 
The description is an attempt to capture the effect of an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher M.C. Escher] drawing or perhaps the Expressionist sets in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligari ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari''] [1920].

==Page 174==
'''Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them."''' 
Here they seem like left-over hippies, Vietnam vets, America's victims. Preterites who want revenge.

'''"The amount of memory on a chip doubles every year and a half!"''' 
Sounds like a variant on Moore's Law, that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

==Page 175==
'''"Karmic adjustment"''' 
Well, yes, it's a nice progression from insurance adjustment, but what does Takeshi actually do? Prairie is still wondering on page 192, and DL never lets on. In any case, it looks like these Thanatoids are dead California yuppies; a resource to be exploited by preterite tradesmen.

'''"interesting work with airplanes"''' 
So, during World War II Takeshi was a kamikaze hence the same Takeshi who's in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']! (See Viking edition, [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-700 page 690]) This brings up an interesting, though peripheral issue: As a Kamikaze, Takeshi flew a Zero. A-and there's a reference on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_663-673 page 672] (of ''GR'') to "Zeros bearing comrades away," reminding us of those human lives as binary code in God's PC. As noted, there are lots of other "zero" reverences (that's a pun, not a typo) in ''Vineland''.

==Page 176==
'''"Domo komarimashita!"''' 
Japanese for "Thanks a lot!" or "You're welcome."

==Page 178==
'''"Interpersonal Programming and the Problem Towee"''' 
Pynchon definitely has an attitude on this kind of California stuff. He also seems to have a grudge against Mercedes drivers.

'''"Sounds like the team I bet on last week."''' 
Vato gets to make the bad pun this time. This is a great montage of the growing relationship between Vato, Blood, Takeshi, and DL.

==Page 179==
'''"Vato wanted it to be a sitcom."''' 
Another example of how deeply TV has invaded our thoughts.

==Page 180==
'''"I'm Chip! I'm Dale!"''' 
A sly comparison of chipmunks: Disney's cartoonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_%27n_Dale Chip 'n Dale] v. Bagdasarian's sonic Alvin, Simon, and Theodore ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chipmunks "Alvin and the Chipmunks"]).

==Page 186==
'''"octogenarihexation"''' 
86'd = thrown out, usually in reference to a drinking establishment. Is it a coincidence that this occurs on page 186? [[Chapter_15#Page_342|See also 43'd, p.342...]]

'''"Yuroks"''' 
The native American Yurok tribe lives along the lower 36 miles of the Klamath River, and along the California coast from Wilson Creek to Trinidad Bay. This may provide a clue to the location of Vineland County. Being Indians, the Yuroks are, naturally, preterite in the Pynchon universe. The woge (note lower case) seem to be Yurok thanatoids, therefore ultra-preterite.

==Page 187==
'''"Bernard Herrmann"''' 
The famous film composer, whose credits include, among many other great picture soundtracks, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock's] classics [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_%281960_film%29 ''Psycho''] [1960] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_%28film%29 ''Vertigo'' [1958].

'''"A Toyota in the treetops"''' 
Is this a tip of the hat to the boat in the tree in Marquez's famous novel of magic realism, ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''?

'''"...vanish unaccountably between Shade Creek and the V & B pound, as Thanatoid units...had been known to do..."''' 
Vanishing Thanatoid cars may push the envelope of fantasy a bit too far. And yet, and yet... They wind up in the tops of trees, you see. It's kind of like 'toon cars: 'toons can drive real cars, real people can drive 'toon cars. Plus, it sets up (much later) the disappearance of Vond's ride in Chapter 15.

==Page 188==
'''Sate..."''' 
A totally abrupt scene-change to Takeshi's, a literary jump cut.

'''"Weed Atman"''' 
Another great name. Weed = marijuana. And [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weed,_California Weed] is a city in Northern California. Also perhaps, an echo of Steven Weed, abandoned boyfriend of heiress Patty Hearst, which raises a very faint reverberation of Frenesi as Patty-in-reverse. Atman = Hindu for breath, the principle of life, the World Soul.

'''"Prairie was hearing this, in her turn, from DL..."''' 
Prairie breaks into the narrative, bouncing us unexpectedly back to the present. These abrupt break-ins by Prairie are fun.

==Page 189==
'''"Variety Loaves...not, as once supposed, safely dead but no, only, queerly, sleeping..."''' 
Thanatoid lunch meat!

==Page 190==
'''"Me gotta go"''' 
A line from Richard Berry's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie "Louie Louie"], made famous by the Kingsmen."

==Page 191==
'''"FFAR"''' 
Folding Fin Aircraft Rocket Launcher, a rather nasty device attached to Apache helicopters around about the time Pynchon was writing Vineland.

'''"Kick Out the Jambs"''' 
Definitely a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_5 the MC 5] tune "Kick Out the Jams." But is "jambs" a typo or a pun?
{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 9

2009-07-22T22:56:24Z

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{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 130==
'''"Fresson process studio photograph"''' 
Photographic printing process that uses coal to produce paper prints with a unique luminosity and grain. Fresson printing produces an image that is characteristically diffused and subtle, reminiscent of the "pointillism" of Impressionist painting. The image is extremely stable; Fresson printing is considered the most archival of any color procedure in use today.

==Page 131==
'''"If you want real ninja product..."''' 
The whole sequence about hiring an assassin is pure cyberpunk schtick.

'''"The Vibrating Palm"''' 
This may be a subtle reference to the old joke-store "buzzer" or "shocker" -- and resonates nicely with the rubber scampi on the previous page.

'''"YakMaf"''' 
Yakuza/Mafia.

==Page 133==
'''"legendary in the dopers' community"''' 
Olympic Boulevard, in Los Angeles, is a major arterial road stretching from 4th Street on the western end of Santa Monica to East Los Angeles -- farther than Wilshire Boulevard and most other streets. Why is the gas station toilet legendary? And why would DL care anyway? All she needs to do is change into her disguise.

In his 2009 psychedelic noir novel ''Inherent Vice'', Pynchon mentions another legendary restroom near Los Angeles:

:"the notorious Oscar's, right across the border from Tijuana, where the toilets were seething round the clock with junkies new and old who'd just scored in Mexico, put the product inside rubber balloons and swallowed them, then crossed back into the U.S. to vomit them back up again." (p.37)

Because this restroom is right across the border, it's not the "legendary" toilet on Olympic Boulevard.

'''"baby-blue shadows..."''' 
Nice description and a precursor to the color of Frenesi's eyes.

==Page 134==
'''"beige hose, white underwear..."''' 
Pynchon's description of DL's Clark Kent outfits is surprisingly accurate, especially for a male. It's like giving the O-O (see note, [[Chapter_6#Page_79|p. 79]]) to a nice Midwestern girl, circa 1960.

==Page 135==
'''"She wasn't sure right away that being sold into white slavery would turn out to be at all beneficial as a career step..."''' 
The kidnap-and-auction sequence is good, fast-moving storytelling: breathless, tense, gripping, light on flashy effects. This is also familiar cyberpunk territory, especially the interview with Wayvone.

==Page 136==
'''"older gentlemen with fingertip deficiencies..."''' 
Yakuza who have screwed up, and demonstrated their remorse by cutting off a fingertip.

==Page 139==
'''"Ufa, mi tratt' a pesci in faccia..."''' 
Literally, "Oof, you've thrown a fish in my face!" It's an ominous Sicilian warning meaning, "You've insulted me most unpleasantly, treated me in the worst possible way!"

==Page 141==
'''"I knew it!"''' 
Prairie breaking into the seamless narrative is almost a Brechtian alienation effect. By now the story is moving so strongly that we've totally forgotten the "as-told-to" frame.

'''"How could [Frenesi] have ever gone near somebody like this Brock guy?"''' 
Good question. Pynchon never really answers it -- unless we accept the idea of Frenesi embodying America's fatal fascination with authority.

'''"what-is-reality exercises"''' 
Reminiscent of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.

'''"Ninja Death Touch calculator"''' 
This joke strikes another false note. The entire sub-plot revolving around the Vibrating Palm is broad comedy, of course, but this smart-ass gag is severely out-of-scale.

==Page 142==
'''"might as well stay home -- watch a Run Run Shaw movie!"''' 
Hong-Kong-based Run-Run Shaw produced the popular (and violent) Bruce Lee karate flicks, also lots of action-packed swords and sorcery adventures (like the ones that clearly inspired a lot of the DL and Takeshi sub-plot).

'''"yellow headlamps of the tech squads..."''' 
The scene in the Footprint is reminiscent of the monolith excavation on the moon in 2001. Also, most of the Japanese dialogue is phrased in Pynchon's unique, sounds-just-like-a-movie style.

'''"...the shadowy world conglomerate Chipco..."''' 
This imaginary entity (an echo, perhaps of the sinister YoYoDyne Corporation in The Crying of Lot 49) is presumably some Intel-like company whose microprocessor chips are sold world wide. No doubt the chips are designed to keep a covert watch on everything, and report back to Chipco -- similar to Byron the Bulb and his fellow gridmates in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''"gigantic animal footprint"''' 
Godzilla's size is pretty well known, and this (as we shall see) sauroid footprint is too large to be that of the big G. However, Godzilla is a product of Japanese movie model technology of the fifties, so who knows what the eighties might bring?

'''"Wawazume Life & Non-Life"''' 
Is this a joke? And what kind? Maybe they insure things other than lives. Maybe Thanatoids get "non-life" insurance. Or it could just be a satirically "tactful" Japanese way of referring to death.

==Page 143==
'''"By the time...gods of the sky."''' 
Note that this immensely long and complicated sentence takes up more than half the page!

==Page 145==
'''"Singapore Sling"''' 
A frivolous cocktail with a pleasant flavor and a lethal punch: the signature drink of the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, a British colony taken by the Japanese in WWII. Conceivably, Minoru might have been stationed there, and picked up a liking for this tourist syrup.

==Page 146==
'''"Chuck, the world's most invisible robot"''' 
Like the fastest draw in the West. Want to see it again?

'''"some planet-wide struggle had been going on for years"''' 
More Pynchonian paranoia.

'''"the Himalayan caper"''' 
Story is written in mock Le Carre shorthand. Here (as elsewhere) Pynchon penetrates to the essence of a genre and gives us a few masterly strokes that evoke the same effect as an entire novel by a lesser writer.

'''"Semtex"''' 
For many years, Semtex has been the plastic explosive of choice for sophisticated aircraft bombers and other terrorists.

'''"pirate ships of the stratosphere"''' 
Presumably, they mount attacks like the one on the Kahuna flight.

==Page 147==
'''"Kutsushita-san!"''' 
lit. "Mr. Socks!"

'''"We called you the Kid."''' 
As in, "I never did the Kenosha Kid?" (See Gravity's Rainbow, p. 60.)

'''"disco music coming out the club doors"''' 
Cyberpunk atmosphere.

==Page 148==
'''"The Yak Doc Workshop"''' 
This may be a riff on Doc Yak, a comic book character.

'''"Takeshi...saw Vond...and thought...it was himself..."''' 
Vond and Takeshi look alike. Does this, as they say, signify? Takeshi as anti-Vond? It's hard to imagine a dark Japanese and a light Caucasian looking alike, but anyway, there's one for each of the tomatoes: an adjuster (insurance or karma, ma'am?) for DL, and a badass for Frenesi.

'''"''gaijin''"''' 
Japanese for foreigner, stranger, outsider.

==Page 149==
'''"Found a cab"''' 
Once again Prairie startles us by breaking into the gripping flashback narrative, but this time the present-tense Takeshi breaks in with her, having just arrived at the SKA retreat. Very cinematic. Takeshi moves instantaneously from past to present, a double-exposure match-dissolve effect.

'''"Moe!"''' 
The first of several references to [http://en.wikipedia.org/Three_stooges The Three Stooges], a nothing-if-not-preterite comedy trio specializing in crude, cruel slapstick.

'''"fingering its smooth rigid contours"''' 
The mock-porno is cute.

==Page 151==
'''"I couldn't see shit."''' 
DL mistakes Takeshi for Vond because of her fuzzy contact lenses. This mistaken-identity riff is worthy of Shakespeare at his most far-fetched and funny.

'''"Eeoo!"''' 
Flash! Pynchon's ear fails! This just isn't as close to the Valspeak expression of disgust as we expect from our boy. The transliteration needs a little more "u" or something.

==Page 153==
'''"Fuckin' Vond. He's the Roadrunner."''' 
Yes, he is.

==Page 154==
'''"Licensed DOM's"''' 
Doctor of Medicine?

==Page 155==
'''"Ninjette Coffee Mess"''' 
Navspeak. In the military, particularly the Navy, coffee mess is a little area where the coffee maker, cups, etc. are kept.

==Page 156==
'''"dorai kuriiningu"''' 
"dry cleaner" More Jive Japlish.

'''"perchloroethylene"''' 
A highly toxic chemical often used for cleaning movie film.

==Page 157==
'''"Not a bar, Fumimota-san."''' 
Silly joke, nicely placed.

==Page 158==
'''"Evoex"''' 
The etymology of this new tranquilizer is clearly from the bacchanalian ejaculation (and crossword puzzle word) "evoe!"

==Page 159==
'''"Michiko Yomama"''' 
A nasty pun, based on the black insult, "Yo' mama!" Let your guard down for a second, and the guy slips in one of these every time.

==Page 160==
'''"Nukey"''' 
Orgasm and atomic detonation meet in one of Pynchon's most awful/wonderful puns (nuke = nookey).

==Page 161==
'''"technically dead"''' 
Since Takeshi lives without fear, this makes him a perfect samurai, and echoes the idea on p. 29 about how a samurai is always prepared to die.

==Page 162==
'''"Just Like a William Powell"''' 
Echoes "Like a Meat Loaf" (p. 363), and, of course, Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."

==Page 163==
'''"Which reminds me, about your PX bill..."''' 
If you had any doubts about the samurai/ninjette subplot being for laughs, this page should convince you.

==Page 164==
'''"Puncutron"''' 
An imaginary therapeutic device whose name suggests an infernal combination of eastern medicine (acupuncture) and high-energy western technology (cyclotron). There's a bit of "punk" in there, too.

'''"Detractors included...managed to keep."''' 
A silly sentence, written in painful mock-German syntax for no discernible reason.

'''"Taiwanese Healthy Brain Aerobics"''' 
More foolishness, this time mixed with music. The selection of tapes for Puncutron listening includes The All-Regimental Bagpipes play Prime Time Favorites (the Tube again!), and perhaps Pynchon's best judgmental title: The Chipmunks Sing Marvin Hamlisch.

==Page 166==
'''Eve and her sister, Lilith''' 
According to an ancient legend, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith Lilith] was not Eve's sister but was Adam's first wife. But Lilith haunts many different fables, traditions, stories in many different cultures. This is also the source of the name for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith_Fair Lilith Fair], a music festival (1997-1999) of only female artists.

'''"...men convinced us that we were the natural administrators of this thing 'morality'..."''' 
Sister Rochelle's feminist Eden parable suggests an interesting modern scenario: Frenesi = Eve, DL = Lilith, Vond = Serpent. This would help explain Frenesi/America's irresistible attraction for the authoritarian Vond.

==Page 167==
'''"The Ordeal of the Thousand Broadway Show Tunes"''' 
Transcendental malarkey.

'''"YOUR MAMA EATS, how can we resist?"''' 
Aggro dining.

==Page 169==
'''"Cheapsat"''' 
Preterite communications personified.

==Page 170==
'''"Like Death, Only Different."''' 
While this is a nice definition of the "oid" suffix, it begs the question of exactly what Thanatoid's are.

'''"But we watch a lot of Tube"''' 
Thanatoids watch lots of TV, trying to advance further into the condition of death. This makes them Reaganite kids? Couch potatoes? Embittered hippies? Everyone in America? Anyway, advancing further into the condition of death is only a restatement of the law of entropy, which may mean that everyone in the universe is a Thanatoid.

==Page 171==
'''"checking the edges of the frame."''' 
Does this mean Takeshi's in a film? Or is Pynchon just grabbing a handy cinema term?

'''"go the opposite way! Back to life!"''' 
This anti-entropic movement makes Takeshi a great hero, a symbol of intelligence (the only truly anti-entropic entity), the life force.

==Page 172==
'''"Shade"''' 
(as in Shade Creek) = ghost.

'''"thick fluids in flexible containers"''' 
i.e., scumbags

'''"The Woodbine Motel"''' 
Harks back, perchance, to the 1870's, the Union Pacific railroad scandal, and the Credit Mobilier. When one party was asked, under oath, where the money was, he replied that it had "gone where the woodbine twineth."

'''"The Zero Inn"''' 
Very thanatoid, preterite and Zoyd-like. Also another zero.

==Page 173==
'''Thanatoids are "victims of karmic imbalances unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..."''' 
So are the Thanatoids victims of the Seventies? Or another version of the preterites in Gravity's Rainbow? Maybe they're just over-determined ghosts of some sort. This description is similar to the kind of thing that psychics talk about when they're trying to make your poltergeists go away; it's the unresolved baggage that keeps the ghosties on the move, and out of wherever they belong. Remember, too, that Shade Creek is "a psychic jumping-off town" where the Thanatoids wait "for the data necessary to pursue their needs and aims (i.e., ghostlike revenge) among the still living..." ([[#Page 171|p. 171]])

'''"Although the streets were irregular and steeply pitched..."''' 
The description is an attempt to capture the effect of an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher M.C. Escher] drawing or perhaps the Expressionist sets in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligari ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari''] [1920].

==Page 174==
'''Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them."''' 
Here they seem like left-over hippies, Vietnam vets, America's victims. Preterites who want revenge.

'''"The amount of memory on a chip doubles every year and a half!"''' 
Sounds like a variant on Moore's Law, that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

==Page 175==
'''"Karmic adjustment"''' 
Well, yes, it's a nice progression from insurance adjustment, but what does Takeshi actually do? Prairie is still wondering on page 192, and DL never lets on. In any case, it looks like these Thanatoids are dead California yuppies; a resource to be exploited by preterite tradesmen.

'''"interesting work with airplanes"''' 
So, during World War II Takeshi was a kamikaze hence the same Takeshi who's in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']! (See Viking edition, [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-700 page 690]) This brings up an interesting, though peripheral issue: As a Kamikaze, Takeshi flew a Zero. A-and there's a reference on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_663-673 page 672] (of ''GR'') to "Zeros bearing comrades away," reminding us of those human lives as binary code in God's PC. As noted, there are lots of other "zero" reverences (that's a pun, not a typo) in ''Vineland''.

==Page 176==
'''"Domo komarimashita!"''' 
Japanese for "Thanks a lot!" or "You're welcome."

==Page 178==
'''"Interpersonal Programming and the Problem Towee"''' 
Pynchon definitely has an attitude on this kind of California stuff. He also seems to have a grudge against Mercedes drivers.

'''"Sounds like the team I bet on last week."''' 
Vato gets to make the bad pun this time. This is a great montage of the growing relationship between Vato, Blood, Takeshi, and DL.

==Page 179==
'''"Vato wanted it to be a sitcom."''' 
Another example of how deeply TV has invaded our thoughts.

==Page 180==
'''"I'm Chip! I'm Dale!"''' 
A sly comparison of chipmunks: Disney's cartoonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_%27n_Dale Chip 'n Dale] v. Bagdasarian's sonic Alvin, Simon, and Theodore ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chipmunks "Alvin and the Chipmunks"]).

==Page 186==
'''"octogenarihexation"''' 
86'd = thrown out, usually in reference to a drinking establishment. Is it a coincidence that this occurs on page 186? [[Chapter_15#Page_342|See also 43'd, p.342...]]

'''"Yuroks"''' 
The native American Yurok tribe lives along the lower 36 miles of the Klamath River, and along the California coast from Wilson Creek to Trinidad Bay. This may provide a clue to the location of Vineland County. Being Indians, the Yuroks are, naturally, preterite in the Pynchon universe. The woge (note lower case) seem to be Yurok thanatoids, therefore ultra-preterite.

==Page 187==
'''"Bernard Herrmann"''' 
The famous film composer, whose credits include, among many other great picture soundtracks, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock's] classics [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_%281960_film%29 ''Psycho''] [1960] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_%28film%29 ''Vertigo'' [1958].

'''"A Toyota in the treetops"''' 
Is this a tip of the hat to the boat in the tree in Marquez's famous novel of magic realism, ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''?

'''"...vanish unaccountably between Shade Creek and the V & B pound, as Thanatoid units...had been known to do..."''' 
Vanishing Thanatoid cars may push the envelope of fantasy a bit too far. And yet, and yet... They wind up in the tops of trees, you see. It's kind of like 'toon cars: 'toons can drive real cars, real people can drive 'toon cars. Plus, it sets up (much later) the disappearance of Vond's ride in Chapter 15.

==Page 188==
'''Sate..."''' 
A totally abrupt scene-change to Takeshi's, a literary jump cut.

'''"Weed Atman"''' 
Another great name. Weed = marijuana. And [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weed,_California Weed] is a city in Northern California. Also perhaps, an echo of Steven Weed, abandoned boyfriend of heiress Patty Hearst, which raises a very faint reverberation of Frenesi as Patty-in-reverse. Atman = Hindu for breath, the principle of life, the World Soul.

'''"Prairie was hearing this, in her turn, from DL..."''' 
Prairie breaks into the narrative, bouncing us unexpectedly back to the present. These abrupt break-ins by Prairie are fun.

==Page 189==
'''"Variety Loaves...not, as once supposed, safely dead but no, only, queerly, sleeping..."''' 
Thanatoid lunch meat!

==Page 190==
'''"Me gotta go"''' 
A line from Richard Berry's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie "Louie Louie"], made famous by the Kingsmen."

==Page 191==
'''"FFAR"''' 
Folding Fin Aircraft Rocket Launcher, a rather nasty device attached to Apache helicopters around about the time Pynchon was writing Vineland.

'''"Kick Out the Jambs"''' 
Definitely a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_5 the MC 5] tune "Kick Out the Jams." But is "jambs" a typo or a pun?
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Chapter 2

2009-07-22T22:43:17Z

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==Page 14==
'''"logger types, fallers, choker setters..."''' 
Faller (aka "cutters") are the elites of logging. Their work is very dangerous as they cut down the trees that are then processed by others. The faller often works shorter hours, and usually works alone. A choker setter fastens chokers devices constructed from five-to eight-foot lengths of 3/8ths diameter steel cable with a sliding bell attached around logs so they can be moved by the yarder, cat, or skidder. It's usually the initial job that a logger will obtain on a logging crew. [http://www.ccrh.org/oral/women&timber/glossary.htm]

[[image:clara-bow.jpg|thumb|100px|right|Clara Bow]]'''Pia Zadora in ''The Clara Bow Story''''' 
The first of many fictitious movies. It's easy to tell, because Pynchon always provides a bracketed date [1980] when he references a real movie, but not a fictitious one. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pia_Zadora Pia Zadora], whose film career (eg. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_Conquers_the_Martians ''Santa Claus Conquers the Martians'']) was going nowhere until she married Israeli multimillionaire Meshulam Riklis in 1977, had some success in film and music, but no longer. Not sure of the connection with the famous silent-film actress [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Bow Clara Bow].

'''"Zoy-oyd..."''' 
Prairie is a wonderfully drawn 14-year-old teenager.

'''"ancient surfer baggies [...] and a dilapidated Hussong's T-shirt..."''' 
Baggies swim trunks that were about knee-length and, yes, baggy were a radical departure from the short and tight men's swimware prevalent in the 60s. They were part of the surfer uniform and were memorialized in song by the Beach Boys and other "surf" groups (The Fantastic Baggies, for one!). So Zoyd's could be over 20 years old.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussong's Hussong's], established in 1890 and located in Ensenada in Baja, Mexico, is the oldest cantina in the Californias, and was and is a popular surfers hangout serving primarily beer, piña colladas and peanuts. It’s also the place where the Margarita was invented—back in October, 1941 by bartender Don Carlos Orozco. Zoyd is indeed a California Boy. And it's somewhat likely that Pynchon swung by Hussong's during one of his Mexico visits.

'''"the Tube"''' 
Consistently capitalized throughout the book.

'''"a chair-high bag of Chee-tos and a sixpack of grapefruit soda from the health-food store."''' 
This combination of junk food and health food defines the North Coast redneck hippie perfectly. But Pynchon's insistent hammering on Zoyd's junk-food habit may go a little deeper like autobiography, maybe?

'''"news anchor Skip Tromblay"''' 
The French word ''trembles'' means "to tremble or shake" and is often used in describing someone's voice. The imperfect form is ''tremblais''. Quivering with excitement?

==Page 15==
'''"almost featured on 'Good Morning America'"''' 
15 minutes of almost fame.

'''"Day-Glo orange [...] some acid green"''' 
"Day-Glo" colors are associated with the Psychedelic Sixties, as they would glow when illuminated with a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_light black light], and "black-light" effects where ubiquitous during that period. "Acid green" makes an appearance in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_181-189 ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

'''"the million crystal trajectories, smooth as fountain-drops"''' 
Cf. In [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Crystal_Palace ''Gravity's Rainbow'']: "He's afraid of the way the glass will fall soon it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace." (p.3)

'''"useful distinction between...defenestrative [and transfenestrative] personality"''' 
Cool Pynchonian satire of California Psychobabble. "Defenestration" is throwing something or someone out an open window; "Transfenestration" is throwing someone ''through'' a closed window, breaking the glass, natch. According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration Wikipedia], the term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year of 1618, i.e., the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague Defenestrations of Prague].

==Page 16==
'''Isaiah Two Four''' 
Zoyd is right. This verse is about turning away from war toward peace: "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

This verse is also the basis for the well known civil rights song "Ain't Gonna Study War No More" (aka, "Down by the Riverside").

'''"Love is strange"''' 
Refers to Mickey and Sylvia's ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Baker Mickey Baker] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Vanderpool's Sylvia Vanderpool]) 1957 Top-40 hit song [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Is_Strange "Love is Strange"]. Clearly on Pynchon's Top-40, as well; he used it as the lead for his [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_cholera.html ''New York Times Book Review'' piece] on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Time_of_Cholera ''Love In the Time of Cholera'']:

:Love, as Mickey and Sylvia, in their 1956 [sic it reached #11 on the Billboard charts in March 1957] hit single, remind us, love is strange. As we grow older it gets stranger, until at some point mortality has come well within the frame of our attention, and there we are, suddenly caught between terminal dates while still talking a game of eternity. It's about then that we may begin to regard love songs, romance novels, soap operas and any live teen-age pronouncements at all on the subject of love with an increasingly impatient, not to mention intolerant, ear.

The tune was allegedly written by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Diddley Bo Diddley] although it was presented to Mickey and Sylvia as being composed by Bo's wife Ethel Smith. Apparently, Bo didn't want the credit because he was pissed off at his music publishers because they didn't pay him enough. Mickey Baker is considered by some to be the first great rock 'n' roll guitarist and, prior to the duo, he was in a rhythm and blues band with saxophonist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Curtis King Curtis] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Taylor_%28jazz%29 Sam "The Man" Taylor]. After the success of "Love is Strange," Mickey moved to Paris where he remained for twenty-five years, touring, very rarely, as a blues guitarist.

==Page 17==
'''"Joey Chitwood-type thrill show"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joie_Chitwood Joey Chitwood] (1912-1988), a legendary "Auto Daredevil," started touring with his death-defying troupe in the 1940s, and continued for decades. He was an inspiration for fellow daredevil [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evel_Knievel Evel Knievel] (1938-2007).

==Page 18==
'''"the Uzi machine gun, 'badass of the desert.'"''' 
Pynchon seems moderately hung up on rear ends in this book (and elsewhere). The phrase "badass" recurs constantly (as it did in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] too, where it achieved Naval Significance as the USS John E. Badass). In addition there's Trasero County (trasero = Spanish for "rump,") Las Nalgas (Spanish for "buttocks,") and Culito Canyon (culito = Spanish for "little ass.") There's also an echo of Da Conho, the cook in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''V.''], whose fantasy involved shooting Muslims in Israel with a .30 caliber machine gun that went "yibble, yibble, yibble." ("Da Conho's machine gun was the only one in the world that went "yibble, yibble," Pynchon pointed out.)

{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 2

2009-07-22T22:43:02Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 16 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 14==
'''"logger types, fallers, choker setters..."''' 
Faller (aka "cutters") are the elites of logging. Their work is very dangerous as they cut down the trees that are then processed by others. The faller often works shorter hours, and usually works alone. A choker setter fastens chokers devices constructed from five-to eight-foot lengths of 3/8ths diameter steel cable with a sliding bell attached around logs so they can be moved by the yarder, cat, or skidder. It's usually the initial job that a logger will obtain on a logging crew. [http://www.ccrh.org/oral/women&timber/glossary.htm]

[[image:clara-bow.jpg|thumb|100px|right|Clara Bow]]'''Pia Zadora in ''The Clara Bow Story''''' 
The first of many fictitious movies. It's easy to tell, because Pynchon always provides a bracketed date [1980] when he references a real movie, but not a fictitious one. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pia_Zadora Pia Zadora], whose film career (eg. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_Conquers_the_Martians ''Santa Claus Conquers the Martians'']) was going nowhere until she married Israeli multimillionaire Meshulam Riklis in 1977, had some success in film and music, but no longer. Not sure of the connection with the famous silent-film actress [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Bow Clara Bow].

'''"Zoy-oyd..."''' 
Prairie is a wonderfully drawn 14-year-old teenager.

'''"ancient surfer baggies [...] and a dilapidated Hussong's T-shirt..."''' 
Baggies swim trunks that were about knee-length and, yes, baggy were a radical departure from the short and tight men's swimware prevalent in the 60s. They were part of the surfer uniform and were memorialized in song by the Beach Boys and other "surf" groups (The Fantastic Baggies, for one!). So Zoyd's could be over 20 years old.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussong's Hussong's], established in 1890 and located in Ensenada in Baja, Mexico, is the oldest cantina in the Californias, and was and is a popular surfers hangout serving primarily beer, piña colladas and peanuts. It’s also the place where the Margarita was invented—back in October, 1941 by bartender Don Carlos Orozco. Zoyd is indeed a California Boy. And it's somewhat likely that Pynchon swung by Hussong's during one of his Mexico visits.

'''"the Tube"''' 
Consistently capitalized throughout the book.

'''"a chair-high bag of Chee-tos and a sixpack of grapefruit soda from the health-food store."''' 
This combination of junk food and health food defines the North Coast redneck hippie perfectly. But Pynchon's insistent hammering on Zoyd's junk-food habit may go a little deeper like autobiography, maybe?

'''"news anchor Skip Tromblay"''' 
The French word ''trembles'' means "to tremble or shake" and is often used in describing someone's voice. The imperfect form is ''tremblais''. Quivering with excitement?

==Page 15==
'''"almost featured on 'Good Morning America'"''' 
15 minutes of almost fame.

'''"Day-Glo orange [...] some acid green"''' 
"Day-Glo" colors are associated with the Psychedelic Sixties, as they would glow when illuminated with a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_light black light], and "black-light" effects where ubiquitous during that period. "Acid green" makes an appearance in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_181-189 ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

'''"the million crystal trajectories, smooth as fountain-drops"''' 
Cf. In [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Crystal_Palace ''Gravity's Rainbow'']: "He's afraid of the way the glass will fall soon it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace." (p.3)

'''"useful distinction between...defenestrative [and transfenestrative] personality"''' 
Cool Pynchonian satire of California Psychobabble. "Defenestration" is throwing something or someone out an open window; "Transfenestration" is throwing someone ''through'' a closed window, breaking the glass, natch. According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration Wikipedia], the term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year of 1618, i.e., the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague Defenestrations of Prague].

==Page 16==
'''Isaiah Two Four''' 
Zoyd is right. This verse is about turning away from war toward peace: "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."This verse is also the basis for the well known civil rights song "Ain't Gonna Study War No More" (aka, "Down by the Riverside").

'''"Love is strange"''' 
Refers to Mickey and Sylvia's ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Baker Mickey Baker] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Vanderpool's Sylvia Vanderpool]) 1957 Top-40 hit song [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Is_Strange "Love is Strange"]. Clearly on Pynchon's Top-40, as well; he used it as the lead for his [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_cholera.html ''New York Times Book Review'' piece] on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Time_of_Cholera ''Love In the Time of Cholera'']:

:Love, as Mickey and Sylvia, in their 1956 [sic it reached #11 on the Billboard charts in March 1957] hit single, remind us, love is strange. As we grow older it gets stranger, until at some point mortality has come well within the frame of our attention, and there we are, suddenly caught between terminal dates while still talking a game of eternity. It's about then that we may begin to regard love songs, romance novels, soap operas and any live teen-age pronouncements at all on the subject of love with an increasingly impatient, not to mention intolerant, ear.

The tune was allegedly written by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Diddley Bo Diddley] although it was presented to Mickey and Sylvia as being composed by Bo's wife Ethel Smith. Apparently, Bo didn't want the credit because he was pissed off at his music publishers because they didn't pay him enough. Mickey Baker is considered by some to be the first great rock 'n' roll guitarist and, prior to the duo, he was in a rhythm and blues band with saxophonist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Curtis King Curtis] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Taylor_%28jazz%29 Sam "The Man" Taylor]. After the success of "Love is Strange," Mickey moved to Paris where he remained for twenty-five years, touring, very rarely, as a blues guitarist.

==Page 17==
'''"Joey Chitwood-type thrill show"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joie_Chitwood Joey Chitwood] (1912-1988), a legendary "Auto Daredevil," started touring with his death-defying troupe in the 1940s, and continued for decades. He was an inspiration for fellow daredevil [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evel_Knievel Evel Knievel] (1938-2007).

==Page 18==
'''"the Uzi machine gun, 'badass of the desert.'"''' 
Pynchon seems moderately hung up on rear ends in this book (and elsewhere). The phrase "badass" recurs constantly (as it did in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] too, where it achieved Naval Significance as the USS John E. Badass). In addition there's Trasero County (trasero = Spanish for "rump,") Las Nalgas (Spanish for "buttocks,") and Culito Canyon (culito = Spanish for "little ass.") There's also an echo of Da Conho, the cook in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''V.''], whose fantasy involved shooting Muslims in Israel with a .30 caliber machine gun that went "yibble, yibble, yibble." ("Da Conho's machine gun was the only one in the world that went "yibble, yibble," Pynchon pointed out.)

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Chapter 2

2009-07-22T22:42:36Z

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==Page 14==
'''"logger types, fallers, choker setters..."''' 
Faller (aka "cutters") are the elites of logging. Their work is very dangerous as they cut down the trees that are then processed by others. The faller often works shorter hours, and usually works alone. A choker setter fastens chokers devices constructed from five-to eight-foot lengths of 3/8ths diameter steel cable with a sliding bell attached around logs so they can be moved by the yarder, cat, or skidder. It's usually the initial job that a logger will obtain on a logging crew. [http://www.ccrh.org/oral/women&timber/glossary.htm]

[[image:clara-bow.jpg|thumb|100px|right|Clara Bow]]'''Pia Zadora in ''The Clara Bow Story''''' 
The first of many fictitious movies. It's easy to tell, because Pynchon always provides a bracketed date [1980] when he references a real movie, but not a fictitious one. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pia_Zadora Pia Zadora], whose film career (eg. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_Conquers_the_Martians ''Santa Claus Conquers the Martians'']) was going nowhere until she married Israeli multimillionaire Meshulam Riklis in 1977, had some success in film and music, but no longer. Not sure of the connection with the famous silent-film actress [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Bow Clara Bow].

'''"Zoy-oyd..."''' 
Prairie is a wonderfully drawn 14-year-old teenager.

'''"ancient surfer baggies [...] and a dilapidated Hussong's T-shirt..."''' 
Baggies swim trunks that were about knee-length and, yes, baggy were a radical departure from the short and tight men's swimware prevalent in the 60s. They were part of the surfer uniform and were memorialized in song by the Beach Boys and other "surf" groups (The Fantastic Baggies, for one!). So Zoyd's could be over 20 years old.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussong's Hussong's], established in 1890 and located in Ensenada in Baja, Mexico, is the oldest cantina in the Californias, and was and is a popular surfers hangout serving primarily beer, piña colladas and peanuts. It’s also the place where the Margarita was invented—back in October, 1941 by bartender Don Carlos Orozco. Zoyd is indeed a California Boy. And it's somewhat likely that Pynchon swung by Hussong's during one of his Mexico visits.

'''"the Tube"''' 
Consistently capitalized throughout the book.

'''"a chair-high bag of Chee-tos and a sixpack of grapefruit soda from the health-food store."''' 
This combination of junk food and health food defines the North Coast redneck hippie perfectly. But Pynchon's insistent hammering on Zoyd's junk-food habit may go a little deeper like autobiography, maybe?

'''"news anchor Skip Tromblay"''' 
The French word ''trembles'' means "to tremble or shake" and is often used in describing someone's voice. The imperfect form is ''tremblais''. Quivering with excitement?

==Page 15==
'''"almost featured on 'Good Morning America'"''' 
15 minutes of almost fame.

'''"Day-Glo orange [...] some acid green"''' 
"Day-Glo" colors are associated with the Psychedelic Sixties, as they would glow when illuminated with a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_light black light], and "black-light" effects where ubiquitous during that period. "Acid green" makes an appearance in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_181-189 ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

'''"the million crystal trajectories, smooth as fountain-drops"''' 
Cf. In [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Crystal_Palace ''Gravity's Rainbow'']: "He's afraid of the way the glass will fall soon it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace." (p.3)

'''"useful distinction between...defenestrative [and transfenestrative] personality"''' 
Cool Pynchonian satire of California Psychobabble. "Defenestration" is throwing something or someone out an open window; "Transfenestration" is throwing someone ''through'' a closed window, breaking the glass, natch. According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration Wikipedia], the term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year of 1618, i.e., the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague Defenestrations of Prague].

==Page 16==
'''Isaiah Two Four''' 
Zoyd is right. This verse is about turning away from war toward peace: "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." This verse is also the basis for the well known civil rights song "Ain't Gonna Study War No More" (aka, "Down by the Riverside").

'''"Love is strange"''' 
Refers to Mickey and Sylvia's ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Baker Mickey Baker] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Vanderpool's Sylvia Vanderpool]) 1957 Top-40 hit song [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Is_Strange "Love is Strange"]. Clearly on Pynchon's Top-40, as well; he used it as the lead for his [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_cholera.html ''New York Times Book Review'' piece] on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Time_of_Cholera ''Love In the Time of Cholera'']:

:Love, as Mickey and Sylvia, in their 1956 [sic it reached #11 on the Billboard charts in March 1957] hit single, remind us, love is strange. As we grow older it gets stranger, until at some point mortality has come well within the frame of our attention, and there we are, suddenly caught between terminal dates while still talking a game of eternity. It's about then that we may begin to regard love songs, romance novels, soap operas and any live teen-age pronouncements at all on the subject of love with an increasingly impatient, not to mention intolerant, ear.

The tune was allegedly written by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Diddley Bo Diddley] although it was presented to Mickey and Sylvia as being composed by Bo's wife Ethel Smith. Apparently, Bo didn't want the credit because he was pissed off at his music publishers because they didn't pay him enough. Mickey Baker is considered by some to be the first great rock 'n' roll guitarist and, prior to the duo, he was in a rhythm and blues band with saxophonist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Curtis King Curtis] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Taylor_%28jazz%29 Sam "The Man" Taylor]. After the success of "Love is Strange," Mickey moved to Paris where he remained for twenty-five years, touring, very rarely, as a blues guitarist.

==Page 17==
'''"Joey Chitwood-type thrill show"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joie_Chitwood Joey Chitwood] (1912-1988), a legendary "Auto Daredevil," started touring with his death-defying troupe in the 1940s, and continued for decades. He was an inspiration for fellow daredevil [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evel_Knievel Evel Knievel] (1938-2007).

==Page 18==
'''"the Uzi machine gun, 'badass of the desert.'"''' 
Pynchon seems moderately hung up on rear ends in this book (and elsewhere). The phrase "badass" recurs constantly (as it did in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] too, where it achieved Naval Significance as the USS John E. Badass). In addition there's Trasero County (trasero = Spanish for "rump,") Las Nalgas (Spanish for "buttocks,") and Culito Canyon (culito = Spanish for "little ass.") There's also an echo of Da Conho, the cook in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''V.''], whose fantasy involved shooting Muslims in Israel with a .30 caliber machine gun that went "yibble, yibble, yibble." ("Da Conho's machine gun was the only one in the world that went "yibble, yibble," Pynchon pointed out.)

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Chapter 9

2009-07-19T05:24:26Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 188 */

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==Page 130==
'''"Fresson process studio photograph"''' 
Photographic printing process that uses coal to produce paper prints with a unique luminosity and grain. Fresson printing produces an image that is characteristically diffused and subtle, reminiscent of the "pointillism" of Impressionist painting. The image is extremely stable; Fresson printing is considered the most archival of any color procedure in use today.

==Page 131==
'''"If you want real ninja product..."''' 
The whole sequence about hiring an assassin is pure cyberpunk schtick.

'''"The Vibrating Palm"''' 
This may be a subtle reference to the old joke-store "buzzer" or "shocker" -- and resonates nicely with the rubber scampi on the previous page.

'''"YakMaf"''' 
Yakuza/Mafia.

==Page 133==
'''"legendary in the dopers' community"''' 
Olympic Boulevard, in Los Angeles, is a major arterial road stretching from 4th Street on the western end of Santa Monica to East Los Angeles -- farther than Wilshire Boulevard and most other streets. Why is the gas station toilet legendary? And why would DL care anyway? All she needs to do is change into her disguise.

In his 2009 psychedelic noir novel ''Inherent Vice'', Pynchon mentions another legendary restroom near Los Angeles:

:"the notorious Oscar's, right across the border from Tijuana, where the toilets were seething round the clock with junkies new and old who'd just scored in Mexico, put the product inside rubber balloons and swallowed them, then crossed back into the U.S. to vomit them back up again." (p.37)

Because this restroom is right across the border, it's not the "legendary" toilet on Olympic Boulevard.

'''"baby-blue shadows..."''' 
Nice description and a precursor to the color of Frenesi's eyes.

==Page 134==
'''"beige hose, white underwear..."''' 
Pynchon's description of DL's Clark Kent outfits is surprisingly accurate, especially for a male. It's like giving the O-O (see note, [[Chapter_6#Page_79|p. 79]]) to a nice Midwestern girl, circa 1960.

==Page 135==
'''"She wasn't sure right away that being sold into white slavery would turn out to be at all beneficial as a career step..."''' 
The kidnap-and-auction sequence is good, fast-moving storytelling: breathless, tense, gripping, light on flashy effects. This is also familiar cyberpunk territory, especially the interview with Wayvone.

==Page 136==
'''"older gentlemen with fingertip deficiencies..."''' 
Yakuza who have screwed up, and demonstrated their remorse by cutting off a fingertip.

==Page 139==
'''"Ufa, mi tratt' a pesci in faccia..."''' 
Literally, "Oof, you've thrown a fish in my face!" It's an ominous Sicilian warning meaning, "You've insulted me most unpleasantly, treated me in the worst possible way!"

==Page 141==
'''"I knew it!"''' 
Prairie breaking into the seamless narrative is almost a Brechtian alienation effect. By now the story is moving so strongly that we've totally forgotten the "as-told-to" frame.

'''"How could [Frenesi] have ever gone near somebody like this Brock guy?"''' 
Good question. Pynchon never really answers it -- unless we accept the idea of Frenesi embodying America's fatal fascination with authority.

'''"what-is-reality exercises"''' 
Reminiscent of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.

'''"Ninja Death Touch calculator"''' 
This joke strikes another false note. The entire sub-plot revolving around the Vibrating Palm is broad comedy, of course, but this smart-ass gag is severely out-of-scale.

==Page 142==
'''"might as well stay home -- watch a Run Run Shaw movie!"''' 
Hong-Kong-based Run-Run Shaw produced the popular (and violent) Bruce Lee karate flicks, also lots of action-packed swords and sorcery adventures (like the ones that clearly inspired a lot of the DL and Takeshi sub-plot).

'''"yellow headlamps of the tech squads..."''' 
The scene in the Footprint is reminiscent of the monolith excavation on the moon in 2001. Also, most of the Japanese dialogue is phrased in Pynchon's unique, sounds-just-like-a-movie style.

'''"...the shadowy world conglomerate Chipco..."''' 
This imaginary entity (an echo, perhaps of the sinister YoYoDyne Corporation in The Crying of Lot 49) is presumably some Intel-like company whose microprocessor chips are sold world wide. No doubt the chips are designed to keep a covert watch on everything, and report back to Chipco -- similar to Byron the Bulb and his fellow gridmates in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''"gigantic animal footprint"''' 
Godzilla's size is pretty well known, and this (as we shall see) sauroid footprint is too large to be that of the big G. However, Godzilla is a product of Japanese movie model technology of the fifties, so who knows what the eighties might bring?

'''"Wawazume Life & Non-Life"''' 
Is this a joke? And what kind? Maybe they insure things other than lives. Maybe Thanatoids get "non-life" insurance. Or it could just be a satirically "tactful" Japanese way of referring to death.

==Page 143==
'''"By the time...gods of the sky."''' 
Note that this immensely long and complicated sentence takes up more than half the page!

==Page 145==
'''"Singapore Sling"''' 
A frivolous cocktail with a pleasant flavor and a lethal punch: the signature drink of the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, a British colony taken by the Japanese in WWII. Conceivably, Minoru might have been stationed there, and picked up a liking for this tourist syrup.

==Page 146==
'''"Chuck, the world's most invisible robot"''' 
Like the fastest draw in the West. Want to see it again?

'''"some planet-wide struggle had been going on for years"''' 
More Pynchonian paranoia.

'''"the Himalayan caper"''' 
Story is written in mock Le Carre shorthand. Here (as elsewhere) Pynchon penetrates to the essence of a genre and gives us a few masterly strokes that evoke the same effect as an entire novel by a lesser writer.

'''"Semtex"''' 
For many years, Semtex has been the plastic explosive of choice for sophisticated aircraft bombers and other terrorists.

'''"pirate ships of the stratosphere"''' 
Presumably, they mount attacks like the one on the Kahuna flight.

==Page 147==
'''"Kutsushita-san!"''' 
lit. "Mr. Socks!"

'''"We called you the Kid."''' 
As in, "I never did the Kenosha Kid?" (See Gravity's Rainbow, p. 60.)

'''"disco music coming out the club doors"''' 
Cyberpunk atmosphere.

==Page 148==
'''"The Yak Doc Workshop"''' 
This may be a riff on Doc Yak, a comic book character.

'''"Takeshi...saw Vond...and thought...it was himself..."''' 
Vond and Takeshi look alike. Does this, as they say, signify? Takeshi as anti-Vond? It's hard to imagine a dark Japanese and a light Caucasian looking alike, but anyway, there's one for each of the tomatoes: an adjuster (insurance or karma, ma'am?) for DL, and a badass for Frenesi.

'''"''gaijin''"''' 
Japanese for foreigner, stranger, outsider.

==Page 149==
'''"Found a cab"''' 
Once again Prairie startles us by breaking into the gripping flashback narrative, but this time the present-tense Takeshi breaks in with her, having just arrived at the SKA retreat. Very cinematic. Takeshi moves instantaneously from past to present, a double-exposure match-dissolve effect.

'''"Moe!"''' 
The first of several references to [http://en.wikipedia.org/Three_stooges The Three Stooges], a nothing-if-not-preterite comedy trio specializing in crude, cruel slapstick.

'''"fingering its smooth rigid contours"''' 
The mock-porno is cute.

==Page 151==
'''"I couldn't see shit."''' 
DL mistakes Takeshi for Vond because of her fuzzy contact lenses. This mistaken-identity riff is worthy of Shakespeare at his most far-fetched and funny.

'''"Eeoo!"''' 
Flash! Pynchon's ear fails! This just isn't as close to the Valspeak expression of disgust as we expect from our boy. The transliteration needs a little more "u" or something.

==Page 153==
'''"Fuckin' Vond. He's the Roadrunner."''' 
Yes, he is.

==Page 154==
'''"Licensed DOM's"''' 
Doctor of Medicine?

==Page 155==
'''"Ninjette Coffee Mess"''' 
Navspeak. In the military, particularly the Navy, coffee mess is a little area where the coffee maker, cups, etc. are kept.

==Page 156==
'''"dorai kuriiningu"''' 
"dry cleaner" More Jive Japlish.

'''"perchloroethylene"''' 
A highly toxic chemical often used for cleaning movie film.

==Page 157==
'''"Not a bar, Fumimota-san."''' 
Silly joke, nicely placed.

==Page 158==
'''"Evoex"''' 
The etymology of this new tranquilizer is clearly from the bacchanalian ejaculation (and crossword puzzle word) "evoe!"

==Page 159==
'''"Michiko Yomama"''' 
A nasty pun, based on the black insult, "Yo' mama!" Let your guard down for a second, and the guy slips in one of these every time.

==Page 160==
'''"Nukey"''' 
Orgasm and atomic detonation meet in one of Pynchon's most awful/wonderful puns (nuke = nookey).

==Page 161==
'''"technically dead"''' 
Since Takeshi lives without fear, this makes him a perfect samurai, and echoes the idea on p. 29 about how a samurai is always prepared to die.

==Page 162==
'''"Just Like a William Powell"''' 
Echoes "Like a Meat Loaf" (p. 363), and, of course, Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."

==Page 163==
'''"Which reminds me, about your PX bill..."''' 
If you had any doubts about the samurai/ninjette subplot being for laughs, this page should convince you.

==Page 164==
'''"Puncutron"''' 
An imaginary therapeutic device whose name suggests an infernal combination of eastern medicine (acupuncture) and high-energy western technology (cyclotron). There's a bit of "punk" in there, too.

'''"Detractors included...managed to keep."''' 
A silly sentence, written in painful mock-German syntax for no discernible reason.

'''"Taiwanese Healthy Brain Aerobics"''' 
More foolishness, this time mixed with music. The selection of tapes for Puncutron listening includes The All-Regimental Bagpipes play Prime Time Favorites (the Tube again!), and perhaps Pynchon's best judgmental title: The Chipmunks Sing Marvin Hamlisch.

==Page 166==
'''"...men convinced us that we were the natural administrators of this thing 'morality'..."''' 
Sister Rochelle's feminist Eden parable suggests an interesting modern scenario: Frenesi = Eve, DL = Lilith, Vond = Serpent. This would help explain Frenesi/America's irresistible attraction for the authoritarian Vond.

==Page 167==
'''"The Ordeal of the Thousand Broadway Show Tunes"''' 
Transcendental malarkey.

'''"YOUR MAMA EATS, how can we resist?"''' 
Aggro dining.

==Page 169==
'''"Cheapsat"''' 
Preterite communications personified.

==Page 170==
'''"Like Death, Only Different."''' 
While this is a nice definition of the "oid" suffix, it begs the question of exactly what Thanatoid's are.

'''"But we watch a lot of Tube"''' 
Thanatoids watch lots of TV, trying to advance further into the condition of death. This makes them Reaganite kids? Couch potatoes? Embittered hippies? Everyone in America? Anyway, advancing further into the condition of death is only a restatement of the law of entropy, which may mean that everyone in the universe is a Thanatoid.

==Page 171==
'''"checking the edges of the frame."''' 
Does this mean Takeshi's in a film? Or is Pynchon just grabbing a handy cinema term?

'''"go the opposite way! Back to life!"''' 
This anti-entropic movement makes Takeshi a great hero, a symbol of intelligence (the only truly anti-entropic entity), the life force.

==Page 172==
'''"Shade"''' 
(as in Shade Creek) = ghost.

'''"thick fluids in flexible containers"''' 
i.e., scumbags

'''"The Woodbine Motel"''' 
Harks back, perchance, to the 1870's, the Union Pacific railroad scandal, and the Credit Mobilier. When one party was asked, under oath, where the money was, he replied that it had "gone where the woodbine twineth."

'''"The Zero Inn"''' 
Very thanatoid, preterite and Zoyd-like. Also another zero.

==Page 173==
'''Thanatoids are "victims of karmic imbalances unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..."''' 
So are the Thanatoids victims of the Seventies? Or another version of the preterites in Gravity's Rainbow? Maybe they're just over-determined ghosts of some sort. This description is similar to the kind of thing that psychics talk about when they're trying to make your poltergeists go away; it's the unresolved baggage that keeps the ghosties on the move, and out of wherever they belong. Remember, too, that Shade Creek is "a psychic jumping-off town" where the Thanatoids wait "for the data necessary to pursue their needs and aims (i.e., ghostlike revenge) among the still living..." ([[#Page 171|p. 171]])

'''"Although the streets were irregular and steeply pitched..."''' 
The description is an attempt to capture the effect of an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher M.C. Escher] drawing or perhaps the Expressionist sets in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligari ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari''] [1920].

==Page 174==
'''Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them."''' 
Here they seem like left-over hippies, Vietnam vets, America's victims. Preterites who want revenge.

'''"The amount of memory on a chip doubles every year and a half!"''' 
Sounds like a variant on Moore's Law, that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

==Page 175==
'''"Karmic adjustment"''' 
Well, yes, it's a nice progression from insurance adjustment, but what does Takeshi actually do? Prairie is still wondering on page 192, and DL never lets on. In any case, it looks like these Thanatoids are dead California yuppies; a resource to be exploited by preterite tradesmen.

'''"interesting work with airplanes"''' 
So, during World War II Takeshi was a kamikaze hence the same Takeshi who's in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']! (See Viking edition, [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-700 page 690]) This brings up an interesting, though peripheral issue: As a Kamikaze, Takeshi flew a Zero. A-and there's a reference on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_663-673 page 672] (of ''GR'') to "Zeros bearing comrades away," reminding us of those human lives as binary code in God's PC. As noted, there are lots of other "zero" reverences (that's a pun, not a typo) in ''Vineland''.

==Page 176==
'''"Domo komarimashita!"''' 
Japanese for "Thanks a lot!" or "You're welcome."

==Page 178==
'''"Interpersonal Programming and the Problem Towee"''' 
Pynchon definitely has an attitude on this kind of California stuff. He also seems to have a grudge against Mercedes drivers.

'''"Sounds like the team I bet on last week."''' 
Vato gets to make the bad pun this time. This is a great montage of the growing relationship between Vato, Blood, Takeshi, and DL.

==Page 179==
'''"Vato wanted it to be a sitcom."''' 
Another example of how deeply TV has invaded our thoughts.

==Page 180==
'''"I'm Chip! I'm Dale!"''' 
A sly comparison of chipmunks: Disney's cartoonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_%27n_Dale Chip 'n Dale] v. Bagdasarian's sonic Alvin, Simon, and Theodore ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chipmunks "Alvin and the Chipmunks"]).

==Page 186==
'''"octogenarihexation"''' 
86'd = thrown out, usually in reference to a drinking establishment. Is it a coincidence that this occurs on page 186? [[Chapter_15#Page_342|See also 43'd, p.342...]]

'''"Yuroks"''' 
The native American Yurok tribe lives along the lower 36 miles of the Klamath River, and along the California coast from Wilson Creek to Trinidad Bay. This may provide a clue to the location of Vineland County. Being Indians, the Yuroks are, naturally, preterite in the Pynchon universe. The woge (note lower case) seem to be Yurok thanatoids, therefore ultra-preterite.

==Page 187==
'''"Bernard Herrmann"''' 
The famous film composer, whose credits include, among many other great picture soundtracks, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock's] classics [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_%281960_film%29 ''Psycho''] [1960] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_%28film%29 ''Vertigo'' [1958].

'''"A Toyota in the treetops"''' 
Is this a tip of the hat to the boat in the tree in Marquez's famous novel of magic realism, ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''?

'''"...vanish unaccountably between Shade Creek and the V & B pound, as Thanatoid units...had been known to do..."''' 
Vanishing Thanatoid cars may push the envelope of fantasy a bit too far. And yet, and yet... They wind up in the tops of trees, you see. It's kind of like 'toon cars: 'toons can drive real cars, real people can drive 'toon cars. Plus, it sets up (much later) the disappearance of Vond's ride in Chapter 15.

==Page 188==
'''Sate..."''' 
A totally abrupt scene-change to Takeshi's, a literary jump cut.

'''"Weed Atman"''' 
Another great name. Weed = marijuana. And [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weed,_California Weed] is a city in Northern California. Also perhaps, an echo of Steven Weed, abandoned boyfriend of heiress Patty Hearst, which raises a very faint reverberation of Frenesi as Patty-in-reverse. Atman = Hindu for breath, the principle of life, the World Soul.

'''"Prairie was hearing this, in her turn, from DL..."''' 
Prairie breaks into the narrative, bouncing us unexpectedly back to the present. These abrupt break-ins by Prairie are fun.

==Page 189==
'''"Variety Loaves...not, as once supposed, safely dead but no, only, queerly, sleeping..."''' 
Thanatoid lunch meat!

==Page 190==
'''"Me gotta go"''' 
A line from Richard Berry's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie "Louie Louie"], made famous by the Kingsmen."

==Page 191==
'''"FFAR"''' 
Folding Fin Aircraft Rocket Launcher, a rather nasty device attached to Apache helicopters around about the time Pynchon was writing Vineland.

'''"Kick Out the Jambs"''' 
Definitely a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_5 the MC 5] tune "Kick Out the Jams." But is "jambs" a typo or a pun?
{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 9

2009-07-19T05:24:01Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 190 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 130==
'''"Fresson process studio photograph"''' 
Photographic printing process that uses coal to produce paper prints with a unique luminosity and grain. Fresson printing produces an image that is characteristically diffused and subtle, reminiscent of the "pointillism" of Impressionist painting. The image is extremely stable; Fresson printing is considered the most archival of any color procedure in use today.

==Page 131==
'''"If you want real ninja product..."''' 
The whole sequence about hiring an assassin is pure cyberpunk schtick.

'''"The Vibrating Palm"''' 
This may be a subtle reference to the old joke-store "buzzer" or "shocker" -- and resonates nicely with the rubber scampi on the previous page.

'''"YakMaf"''' 
Yakuza/Mafia.

==Page 133==
'''"legendary in the dopers' community"''' 
Olympic Boulevard, in Los Angeles, is a major arterial road stretching from 4th Street on the western end of Santa Monica to East Los Angeles -- farther than Wilshire Boulevard and most other streets. Why is the gas station toilet legendary? And why would DL care anyway? All she needs to do is change into her disguise.

In his 2009 psychedelic noir novel ''Inherent Vice'', Pynchon mentions another legendary restroom near Los Angeles:

:"the notorious Oscar's, right across the border from Tijuana, where the toilets were seething round the clock with junkies new and old who'd just scored in Mexico, put the product inside rubber balloons and swallowed them, then crossed back into the U.S. to vomit them back up again." (p.37)

Because this restroom is right across the border, it's not the "legendary" toilet on Olympic Boulevard.

'''"baby-blue shadows..."''' 
Nice description and a precursor to the color of Frenesi's eyes.

==Page 134==
'''"beige hose, white underwear..."''' 
Pynchon's description of DL's Clark Kent outfits is surprisingly accurate, especially for a male. It's like giving the O-O (see note, [[Chapter_6#Page_79|p. 79]]) to a nice Midwestern girl, circa 1960.

==Page 135==
'''"She wasn't sure right away that being sold into white slavery would turn out to be at all beneficial as a career step..."''' 
The kidnap-and-auction sequence is good, fast-moving storytelling: breathless, tense, gripping, light on flashy effects. This is also familiar cyberpunk territory, especially the interview with Wayvone.

==Page 136==
'''"older gentlemen with fingertip deficiencies..."''' 
Yakuza who have screwed up, and demonstrated their remorse by cutting off a fingertip.

==Page 139==
'''"Ufa, mi tratt' a pesci in faccia..."''' 
Literally, "Oof, you've thrown a fish in my face!" It's an ominous Sicilian warning meaning, "You've insulted me most unpleasantly, treated me in the worst possible way!"

==Page 141==
'''"I knew it!"''' 
Prairie breaking into the seamless narrative is almost a Brechtian alienation effect. By now the story is moving so strongly that we've totally forgotten the "as-told-to" frame.

'''"How could [Frenesi] have ever gone near somebody like this Brock guy?"''' 
Good question. Pynchon never really answers it -- unless we accept the idea of Frenesi embodying America's fatal fascination with authority.

'''"what-is-reality exercises"''' 
Reminiscent of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.

'''"Ninja Death Touch calculator"''' 
This joke strikes another false note. The entire sub-plot revolving around the Vibrating Palm is broad comedy, of course, but this smart-ass gag is severely out-of-scale.

==Page 142==
'''"might as well stay home -- watch a Run Run Shaw movie!"''' 
Hong-Kong-based Run-Run Shaw produced the popular (and violent) Bruce Lee karate flicks, also lots of action-packed swords and sorcery adventures (like the ones that clearly inspired a lot of the DL and Takeshi sub-plot).

'''"yellow headlamps of the tech squads..."''' 
The scene in the Footprint is reminiscent of the monolith excavation on the moon in 2001. Also, most of the Japanese dialogue is phrased in Pynchon's unique, sounds-just-like-a-movie style.

'''"...the shadowy world conglomerate Chipco..."''' 
This imaginary entity (an echo, perhaps of the sinister YoYoDyne Corporation in The Crying of Lot 49) is presumably some Intel-like company whose microprocessor chips are sold world wide. No doubt the chips are designed to keep a covert watch on everything, and report back to Chipco -- similar to Byron the Bulb and his fellow gridmates in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''"gigantic animal footprint"''' 
Godzilla's size is pretty well known, and this (as we shall see) sauroid footprint is too large to be that of the big G. However, Godzilla is a product of Japanese movie model technology of the fifties, so who knows what the eighties might bring?

'''"Wawazume Life & Non-Life"''' 
Is this a joke? And what kind? Maybe they insure things other than lives. Maybe Thanatoids get "non-life" insurance. Or it could just be a satirically "tactful" Japanese way of referring to death.

==Page 143==
'''"By the time...gods of the sky."''' 
Note that this immensely long and complicated sentence takes up more than half the page!

==Page 145==
'''"Singapore Sling"''' 
A frivolous cocktail with a pleasant flavor and a lethal punch: the signature drink of the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, a British colony taken by the Japanese in WWII. Conceivably, Minoru might have been stationed there, and picked up a liking for this tourist syrup.

==Page 146==
'''"Chuck, the world's most invisible robot"''' 
Like the fastest draw in the West. Want to see it again?

'''"some planet-wide struggle had been going on for years"''' 
More Pynchonian paranoia.

'''"the Himalayan caper"''' 
Story is written in mock Le Carre shorthand. Here (as elsewhere) Pynchon penetrates to the essence of a genre and gives us a few masterly strokes that evoke the same effect as an entire novel by a lesser writer.

'''"Semtex"''' 
For many years, Semtex has been the plastic explosive of choice for sophisticated aircraft bombers and other terrorists.

'''"pirate ships of the stratosphere"''' 
Presumably, they mount attacks like the one on the Kahuna flight.

==Page 147==
'''"Kutsushita-san!"''' 
lit. "Mr. Socks!"

'''"We called you the Kid."''' 
As in, "I never did the Kenosha Kid?" (See Gravity's Rainbow, p. 60.)

'''"disco music coming out the club doors"''' 
Cyberpunk atmosphere.

==Page 148==
'''"The Yak Doc Workshop"''' 
This may be a riff on Doc Yak, a comic book character.

'''"Takeshi...saw Vond...and thought...it was himself..."''' 
Vond and Takeshi look alike. Does this, as they say, signify? Takeshi as anti-Vond? It's hard to imagine a dark Japanese and a light Caucasian looking alike, but anyway, there's one for each of the tomatoes: an adjuster (insurance or karma, ma'am?) for DL, and a badass for Frenesi.

'''"''gaijin''"''' 
Japanese for foreigner, stranger, outsider.

==Page 149==
'''"Found a cab"''' 
Once again Prairie startles us by breaking into the gripping flashback narrative, but this time the present-tense Takeshi breaks in with her, having just arrived at the SKA retreat. Very cinematic. Takeshi moves instantaneously from past to present, a double-exposure match-dissolve effect.

'''"Moe!"''' 
The first of several references to [http://en.wikipedia.org/Three_stooges The Three Stooges], a nothing-if-not-preterite comedy trio specializing in crude, cruel slapstick.

'''"fingering its smooth rigid contours"''' 
The mock-porno is cute.

==Page 151==
'''"I couldn't see shit."''' 
DL mistakes Takeshi for Vond because of her fuzzy contact lenses. This mistaken-identity riff is worthy of Shakespeare at his most far-fetched and funny.

'''"Eeoo!"''' 
Flash! Pynchon's ear fails! This just isn't as close to the Valspeak expression of disgust as we expect from our boy. The transliteration needs a little more "u" or something.

==Page 153==
'''"Fuckin' Vond. He's the Roadrunner."''' 
Yes, he is.

==Page 154==
'''"Licensed DOM's"''' 
Doctor of Medicine?

==Page 155==
'''"Ninjette Coffee Mess"''' 
Navspeak. In the military, particularly the Navy, coffee mess is a little area where the coffee maker, cups, etc. are kept.

==Page 156==
'''"dorai kuriiningu"''' 
"dry cleaner" More Jive Japlish.

'''"perchloroethylene"''' 
A highly toxic chemical often used for cleaning movie film.

==Page 157==
'''"Not a bar, Fumimota-san."''' 
Silly joke, nicely placed.

==Page 158==
'''"Evoex"''' 
The etymology of this new tranquilizer is clearly from the bacchanalian ejaculation (and crossword puzzle word) "evoe!"

==Page 159==
'''"Michiko Yomama"''' 
A nasty pun, based on the black insult, "Yo' mama!" Let your guard down for a second, and the guy slips in one of these every time.

==Page 160==
'''"Nukey"''' 
Orgasm and atomic detonation meet in one of Pynchon's most awful/wonderful puns (nuke = nookey).

==Page 161==
'''"technically dead"''' 
Since Takeshi lives without fear, this makes him a perfect samurai, and echoes the idea on p. 29 about how a samurai is always prepared to die.

==Page 162==
'''"Just Like a William Powell"''' 
Echoes "Like a Meat Loaf" (p. 363), and, of course, Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."

==Page 163==
'''"Which reminds me, about your PX bill..."''' 
If you had any doubts about the samurai/ninjette subplot being for laughs, this page should convince you.

==Page 164==
'''"Puncutron"''' 
An imaginary therapeutic device whose name suggests an infernal combination of eastern medicine (acupuncture) and high-energy western technology (cyclotron). There's a bit of "punk" in there, too.

'''"Detractors included...managed to keep."''' 
A silly sentence, written in painful mock-German syntax for no discernible reason.

'''"Taiwanese Healthy Brain Aerobics"''' 
More foolishness, this time mixed with music. The selection of tapes for Puncutron listening includes The All-Regimental Bagpipes play Prime Time Favorites (the Tube again!), and perhaps Pynchon's best judgmental title: The Chipmunks Sing Marvin Hamlisch.

==Page 166==
'''"...men convinced us that we were the natural administrators of this thing 'morality'..."''' 
Sister Rochelle's feminist Eden parable suggests an interesting modern scenario: Frenesi = Eve, DL = Lilith, Vond = Serpent. This would help explain Frenesi/America's irresistible attraction for the authoritarian Vond.

==Page 167==
'''"The Ordeal of the Thousand Broadway Show Tunes"''' 
Transcendental malarkey.

'''"YOUR MAMA EATS, how can we resist?"''' 
Aggro dining.

==Page 169==
'''"Cheapsat"''' 
Preterite communications personified.

==Page 170==
'''"Like Death, Only Different."''' 
While this is a nice definition of the "oid" suffix, it begs the question of exactly what Thanatoid's are.

'''"But we watch a lot of Tube"''' 
Thanatoids watch lots of TV, trying to advance further into the condition of death. This makes them Reaganite kids? Couch potatoes? Embittered hippies? Everyone in America? Anyway, advancing further into the condition of death is only a restatement of the law of entropy, which may mean that everyone in the universe is a Thanatoid.

==Page 171==
'''"checking the edges of the frame."''' 
Does this mean Takeshi's in a film? Or is Pynchon just grabbing a handy cinema term?

'''"go the opposite way! Back to life!"''' 
This anti-entropic movement makes Takeshi a great hero, a symbol of intelligence (the only truly anti-entropic entity), the life force.

==Page 172==
'''"Shade"''' 
(as in Shade Creek) = ghost.

'''"thick fluids in flexible containers"''' 
i.e., scumbags

'''"The Woodbine Motel"''' 
Harks back, perchance, to the 1870's, the Union Pacific railroad scandal, and the Credit Mobilier. When one party was asked, under oath, where the money was, he replied that it had "gone where the woodbine twineth."

'''"The Zero Inn"''' 
Very thanatoid, preterite and Zoyd-like. Also another zero.

==Page 173==
'''Thanatoids are "victims of karmic imbalances unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..."''' 
So are the Thanatoids victims of the Seventies? Or another version of the preterites in Gravity's Rainbow? Maybe they're just over-determined ghosts of some sort. This description is similar to the kind of thing that psychics talk about when they're trying to make your poltergeists go away; it's the unresolved baggage that keeps the ghosties on the move, and out of wherever they belong. Remember, too, that Shade Creek is "a psychic jumping-off town" where the Thanatoids wait "for the data necessary to pursue their needs and aims (i.e., ghostlike revenge) among the still living..." ([[#Page 171|p. 171]])

'''"Although the streets were irregular and steeply pitched..."''' 
The description is an attempt to capture the effect of an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher M.C. Escher] drawing or perhaps the Expressionist sets in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligari ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari''] [1920].

==Page 174==
'''Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them."''' 
Here they seem like left-over hippies, Vietnam vets, America's victims. Preterites who want revenge.

'''"The amount of memory on a chip doubles every year and a half!"''' 
Sounds like a variant on Moore's Law, that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

==Page 175==
'''"Karmic adjustment"''' 
Well, yes, it's a nice progression from insurance adjustment, but what does Takeshi actually do? Prairie is still wondering on page 192, and DL never lets on. In any case, it looks like these Thanatoids are dead California yuppies; a resource to be exploited by preterite tradesmen.

'''"interesting work with airplanes"''' 
So, during World War II Takeshi was a kamikaze hence the same Takeshi who's in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']! (See Viking edition, [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-700 page 690]) This brings up an interesting, though peripheral issue: As a Kamikaze, Takeshi flew a Zero. A-and there's a reference on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_663-673 page 672] (of ''GR'') to "Zeros bearing comrades away," reminding us of those human lives as binary code in God's PC. As noted, there are lots of other "zero" reverences (that's a pun, not a typo) in ''Vineland''.

==Page 176==
'''"Domo komarimashita!"''' 
Japanese for "Thanks a lot!" or "You're welcome."

==Page 178==
'''"Interpersonal Programming and the Problem Towee"''' 
Pynchon definitely has an attitude on this kind of California stuff. He also seems to have a grudge against Mercedes drivers.

'''"Sounds like the team I bet on last week."''' 
Vato gets to make the bad pun this time. This is a great montage of the growing relationship between Vato, Blood, Takeshi, and DL.

==Page 179==
'''"Vato wanted it to be a sitcom."''' 
Another example of how deeply TV has invaded our thoughts.

==Page 180==
'''"I'm Chip! I'm Dale!"''' 
A sly comparison of chipmunks: Disney's cartoonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_%27n_Dale Chip 'n Dale] v. Bagdasarian's sonic Alvin, Simon, and Theodore ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chipmunks "Alvin and the Chipmunks"]).

==Page 186==
'''"octogenarihexation"''' 
86'd = thrown out, usually in reference to a drinking establishment. Is it a coincidence that this occurs on page 186? [[Chapter_15#Page_342|See also 43'd, p.342...]]

'''"Yuroks"''' 
The native American Yurok tribe lives along the lower 36 miles of the Klamath River, and along the California coast from Wilson Creek to Trinidad Bay. This may provide a clue to the location of Vineland County. Being Indians, the Yuroks are, naturally, preterite in the Pynchon universe. The woge (note lower case) seem to be Yurok thanatoids, therefore ultra-preterite.

==Page 187==
'''"Bernard Herrmann"''' 
The famous film composer, whose credits include, among many other great picture soundtracks, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock's] classics [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_%281960_film%29 ''Psycho''] [1960] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_%28film%29 ''Vertigo'' [1958].

'''"A Toyota in the treetops"''' 
Is this a tip of the hat to the boat in the tree in Marquez's famous novel of magic realism, ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''?

'''"...vanish unaccountably between Shade Creek and the V & B pound, as Thanatoid units...had been known to do..."''' 
Vanishing Thanatoid cars may push the envelope of fantasy a bit too far. And yet, and yet... They wind up in the tops of trees, you see. It's kind of like 'toon cars: 'toons can drive real cars, real people can drive 'toon cars. Plus, it sets up (much later) the disappearance of Vond's ride in Chapter 15.

==Page 188==
'''Sate..."''' 
A totally abrupt scene-change to Takeshi's, a literary jump cut.

'''"Weed Atman"''' 
Another great name. Weed = marijuana. And Weed is a city in Northern California. Also perhaps, an echo of Steven Weed, abandoned boyfriend of heiress Patty Hearst, which raises a very faint reverberation of Frenesi as Patty-in-reverse. Atman = Hindu for breath, the principle of life, the World Soul.

'''"Prairie was hearing this, in her turn, from DL..."''' 
Prairie breaks into the narrative, bouncing us unexpectedly back to the present. These abrupt break-ins by Prairie are fun.

==Page 189==
'''"Variety Loaves...not, as once supposed, safely dead but no, only, queerly, sleeping..."''' 
Thanatoid lunch meat!

==Page 190==
'''"Me gotta go"''' 
A line from Richard Berry's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie "Louie Louie"], made famous by the Kingsmen."

==Page 191==
'''"FFAR"''' 
Folding Fin Aircraft Rocket Launcher, a rather nasty device attached to Apache helicopters around about the time Pynchon was writing Vineland.

'''"Kick Out the Jambs"''' 
Definitely a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_5 the MC 5] tune "Kick Out the Jams." But is "jambs" a typo or a pun?
{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 9

2009-07-19T05:23:22Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 188 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 130==
'''"Fresson process studio photograph"''' 
Photographic printing process that uses coal to produce paper prints with a unique luminosity and grain. Fresson printing produces an image that is characteristically diffused and subtle, reminiscent of the "pointillism" of Impressionist painting. The image is extremely stable; Fresson printing is considered the most archival of any color procedure in use today.

==Page 131==
'''"If you want real ninja product..."''' 
The whole sequence about hiring an assassin is pure cyberpunk schtick.

'''"The Vibrating Palm"''' 
This may be a subtle reference to the old joke-store "buzzer" or "shocker" -- and resonates nicely with the rubber scampi on the previous page.

'''"YakMaf"''' 
Yakuza/Mafia.

==Page 133==
'''"legendary in the dopers' community"''' 
Olympic Boulevard, in Los Angeles, is a major arterial road stretching from 4th Street on the western end of Santa Monica to East Los Angeles -- farther than Wilshire Boulevard and most other streets. Why is the gas station toilet legendary? And why would DL care anyway? All she needs to do is change into her disguise.

In his 2009 psychedelic noir novel ''Inherent Vice'', Pynchon mentions another legendary restroom near Los Angeles:

:"the notorious Oscar's, right across the border from Tijuana, where the toilets were seething round the clock with junkies new and old who'd just scored in Mexico, put the product inside rubber balloons and swallowed them, then crossed back into the U.S. to vomit them back up again." (p.37)

Because this restroom is right across the border, it's not the "legendary" toilet on Olympic Boulevard.

'''"baby-blue shadows..."''' 
Nice description and a precursor to the color of Frenesi's eyes.

==Page 134==
'''"beige hose, white underwear..."''' 
Pynchon's description of DL's Clark Kent outfits is surprisingly accurate, especially for a male. It's like giving the O-O (see note, [[Chapter_6#Page_79|p. 79]]) to a nice Midwestern girl, circa 1960.

==Page 135==
'''"She wasn't sure right away that being sold into white slavery would turn out to be at all beneficial as a career step..."''' 
The kidnap-and-auction sequence is good, fast-moving storytelling: breathless, tense, gripping, light on flashy effects. This is also familiar cyberpunk territory, especially the interview with Wayvone.

==Page 136==
'''"older gentlemen with fingertip deficiencies..."''' 
Yakuza who have screwed up, and demonstrated their remorse by cutting off a fingertip.

==Page 139==
'''"Ufa, mi tratt' a pesci in faccia..."''' 
Literally, "Oof, you've thrown a fish in my face!" It's an ominous Sicilian warning meaning, "You've insulted me most unpleasantly, treated me in the worst possible way!"

==Page 141==
'''"I knew it!"''' 
Prairie breaking into the seamless narrative is almost a Brechtian alienation effect. By now the story is moving so strongly that we've totally forgotten the "as-told-to" frame.

'''"How could [Frenesi] have ever gone near somebody like this Brock guy?"''' 
Good question. Pynchon never really answers it -- unless we accept the idea of Frenesi embodying America's fatal fascination with authority.

'''"what-is-reality exercises"''' 
Reminiscent of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.

'''"Ninja Death Touch calculator"''' 
This joke strikes another false note. The entire sub-plot revolving around the Vibrating Palm is broad comedy, of course, but this smart-ass gag is severely out-of-scale.

==Page 142==
'''"might as well stay home -- watch a Run Run Shaw movie!"''' 
Hong-Kong-based Run-Run Shaw produced the popular (and violent) Bruce Lee karate flicks, also lots of action-packed swords and sorcery adventures (like the ones that clearly inspired a lot of the DL and Takeshi sub-plot).

'''"yellow headlamps of the tech squads..."''' 
The scene in the Footprint is reminiscent of the monolith excavation on the moon in 2001. Also, most of the Japanese dialogue is phrased in Pynchon's unique, sounds-just-like-a-movie style.

'''"...the shadowy world conglomerate Chipco..."''' 
This imaginary entity (an echo, perhaps of the sinister YoYoDyne Corporation in The Crying of Lot 49) is presumably some Intel-like company whose microprocessor chips are sold world wide. No doubt the chips are designed to keep a covert watch on everything, and report back to Chipco -- similar to Byron the Bulb and his fellow gridmates in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''"gigantic animal footprint"''' 
Godzilla's size is pretty well known, and this (as we shall see) sauroid footprint is too large to be that of the big G. However, Godzilla is a product of Japanese movie model technology of the fifties, so who knows what the eighties might bring?

'''"Wawazume Life & Non-Life"''' 
Is this a joke? And what kind? Maybe they insure things other than lives. Maybe Thanatoids get "non-life" insurance. Or it could just be a satirically "tactful" Japanese way of referring to death.

==Page 143==
'''"By the time...gods of the sky."''' 
Note that this immensely long and complicated sentence takes up more than half the page!

==Page 145==
'''"Singapore Sling"''' 
A frivolous cocktail with a pleasant flavor and a lethal punch: the signature drink of the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, a British colony taken by the Japanese in WWII. Conceivably, Minoru might have been stationed there, and picked up a liking for this tourist syrup.

==Page 146==
'''"Chuck, the world's most invisible robot"''' 
Like the fastest draw in the West. Want to see it again?

'''"some planet-wide struggle had been going on for years"''' 
More Pynchonian paranoia.

'''"the Himalayan caper"''' 
Story is written in mock Le Carre shorthand. Here (as elsewhere) Pynchon penetrates to the essence of a genre and gives us a few masterly strokes that evoke the same effect as an entire novel by a lesser writer.

'''"Semtex"''' 
For many years, Semtex has been the plastic explosive of choice for sophisticated aircraft bombers and other terrorists.

'''"pirate ships of the stratosphere"''' 
Presumably, they mount attacks like the one on the Kahuna flight.

==Page 147==
'''"Kutsushita-san!"''' 
lit. "Mr. Socks!"

'''"We called you the Kid."''' 
As in, "I never did the Kenosha Kid?" (See Gravity's Rainbow, p. 60.)

'''"disco music coming out the club doors"''' 
Cyberpunk atmosphere.

==Page 148==
'''"The Yak Doc Workshop"''' 
This may be a riff on Doc Yak, a comic book character.

'''"Takeshi...saw Vond...and thought...it was himself..."''' 
Vond and Takeshi look alike. Does this, as they say, signify? Takeshi as anti-Vond? It's hard to imagine a dark Japanese and a light Caucasian looking alike, but anyway, there's one for each of the tomatoes: an adjuster (insurance or karma, ma'am?) for DL, and a badass for Frenesi.

'''"''gaijin''"''' 
Japanese for foreigner, stranger, outsider.

==Page 149==
'''"Found a cab"''' 
Once again Prairie startles us by breaking into the gripping flashback narrative, but this time the present-tense Takeshi breaks in with her, having just arrived at the SKA retreat. Very cinematic. Takeshi moves instantaneously from past to present, a double-exposure match-dissolve effect.

'''"Moe!"''' 
The first of several references to [http://en.wikipedia.org/Three_stooges The Three Stooges], a nothing-if-not-preterite comedy trio specializing in crude, cruel slapstick.

'''"fingering its smooth rigid contours"''' 
The mock-porno is cute.

==Page 151==
'''"I couldn't see shit."''' 
DL mistakes Takeshi for Vond because of her fuzzy contact lenses. This mistaken-identity riff is worthy of Shakespeare at his most far-fetched and funny.

'''"Eeoo!"''' 
Flash! Pynchon's ear fails! This just isn't as close to the Valspeak expression of disgust as we expect from our boy. The transliteration needs a little more "u" or something.

==Page 153==
'''"Fuckin' Vond. He's the Roadrunner."''' 
Yes, he is.

==Page 154==
'''"Licensed DOM's"''' 
Doctor of Medicine?

==Page 155==
'''"Ninjette Coffee Mess"''' 
Navspeak. In the military, particularly the Navy, coffee mess is a little area where the coffee maker, cups, etc. are kept.

==Page 156==
'''"dorai kuriiningu"''' 
"dry cleaner" More Jive Japlish.

'''"perchloroethylene"''' 
A highly toxic chemical often used for cleaning movie film.

==Page 157==
'''"Not a bar, Fumimota-san."''' 
Silly joke, nicely placed.

==Page 158==
'''"Evoex"''' 
The etymology of this new tranquilizer is clearly from the bacchanalian ejaculation (and crossword puzzle word) "evoe!"

==Page 159==
'''"Michiko Yomama"''' 
A nasty pun, based on the black insult, "Yo' mama!" Let your guard down for a second, and the guy slips in one of these every time.

==Page 160==
'''"Nukey"''' 
Orgasm and atomic detonation meet in one of Pynchon's most awful/wonderful puns (nuke = nookey).

==Page 161==
'''"technically dead"''' 
Since Takeshi lives without fear, this makes him a perfect samurai, and echoes the idea on p. 29 about how a samurai is always prepared to die.

==Page 162==
'''"Just Like a William Powell"''' 
Echoes "Like a Meat Loaf" (p. 363), and, of course, Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."

==Page 163==
'''"Which reminds me, about your PX bill..."''' 
If you had any doubts about the samurai/ninjette subplot being for laughs, this page should convince you.

==Page 164==
'''"Puncutron"''' 
An imaginary therapeutic device whose name suggests an infernal combination of eastern medicine (acupuncture) and high-energy western technology (cyclotron). There's a bit of "punk" in there, too.

'''"Detractors included...managed to keep."''' 
A silly sentence, written in painful mock-German syntax for no discernible reason.

'''"Taiwanese Healthy Brain Aerobics"''' 
More foolishness, this time mixed with music. The selection of tapes for Puncutron listening includes The All-Regimental Bagpipes play Prime Time Favorites (the Tube again!), and perhaps Pynchon's best judgmental title: The Chipmunks Sing Marvin Hamlisch.

==Page 166==
'''"...men convinced us that we were the natural administrators of this thing 'morality'..."''' 
Sister Rochelle's feminist Eden parable suggests an interesting modern scenario: Frenesi = Eve, DL = Lilith, Vond = Serpent. This would help explain Frenesi/America's irresistible attraction for the authoritarian Vond.

==Page 167==
'''"The Ordeal of the Thousand Broadway Show Tunes"''' 
Transcendental malarkey.

'''"YOUR MAMA EATS, how can we resist?"''' 
Aggro dining.

==Page 169==
'''"Cheapsat"''' 
Preterite communications personified.

==Page 170==
'''"Like Death, Only Different."''' 
While this is a nice definition of the "oid" suffix, it begs the question of exactly what Thanatoid's are.

'''"But we watch a lot of Tube"''' 
Thanatoids watch lots of TV, trying to advance further into the condition of death. This makes them Reaganite kids? Couch potatoes? Embittered hippies? Everyone in America? Anyway, advancing further into the condition of death is only a restatement of the law of entropy, which may mean that everyone in the universe is a Thanatoid.

==Page 171==
'''"checking the edges of the frame."''' 
Does this mean Takeshi's in a film? Or is Pynchon just grabbing a handy cinema term?

'''"go the opposite way! Back to life!"''' 
This anti-entropic movement makes Takeshi a great hero, a symbol of intelligence (the only truly anti-entropic entity), the life force.

==Page 172==
'''"Shade"''' 
(as in Shade Creek) = ghost.

'''"thick fluids in flexible containers"''' 
i.e., scumbags

'''"The Woodbine Motel"''' 
Harks back, perchance, to the 1870's, the Union Pacific railroad scandal, and the Credit Mobilier. When one party was asked, under oath, where the money was, he replied that it had "gone where the woodbine twineth."

'''"The Zero Inn"''' 
Very thanatoid, preterite and Zoyd-like. Also another zero.

==Page 173==
'''Thanatoids are "victims of karmic imbalances unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..."''' 
So are the Thanatoids victims of the Seventies? Or another version of the preterites in Gravity's Rainbow? Maybe they're just over-determined ghosts of some sort. This description is similar to the kind of thing that psychics talk about when they're trying to make your poltergeists go away; it's the unresolved baggage that keeps the ghosties on the move, and out of wherever they belong. Remember, too, that Shade Creek is "a psychic jumping-off town" where the Thanatoids wait "for the data necessary to pursue their needs and aims (i.e., ghostlike revenge) among the still living..." ([[#Page 171|p. 171]])

'''"Although the streets were irregular and steeply pitched..."''' 
The description is an attempt to capture the effect of an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher M.C. Escher] drawing or perhaps the Expressionist sets in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligari ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari''] [1920].

==Page 174==
'''Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them."''' 
Here they seem like left-over hippies, Vietnam vets, America's victims. Preterites who want revenge.

'''"The amount of memory on a chip doubles every year and a half!"''' 
Sounds like a variant on Moore's Law, that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

==Page 175==
'''"Karmic adjustment"''' 
Well, yes, it's a nice progression from insurance adjustment, but what does Takeshi actually do? Prairie is still wondering on page 192, and DL never lets on. In any case, it looks like these Thanatoids are dead California yuppies; a resource to be exploited by preterite tradesmen.

'''"interesting work with airplanes"''' 
So, during World War II Takeshi was a kamikaze hence the same Takeshi who's in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']! (See Viking edition, [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-700 page 690]) This brings up an interesting, though peripheral issue: As a Kamikaze, Takeshi flew a Zero. A-and there's a reference on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_663-673 page 672] (of ''GR'') to "Zeros bearing comrades away," reminding us of those human lives as binary code in God's PC. As noted, there are lots of other "zero" reverences (that's a pun, not a typo) in ''Vineland''.

==Page 176==
'''"Domo komarimashita!"''' 
Japanese for "Thanks a lot!" or "You're welcome."

==Page 178==
'''"Interpersonal Programming and the Problem Towee"''' 
Pynchon definitely has an attitude on this kind of California stuff. He also seems to have a grudge against Mercedes drivers.

'''"Sounds like the team I bet on last week."''' 
Vato gets to make the bad pun this time. This is a great montage of the growing relationship between Vato, Blood, Takeshi, and DL.

==Page 179==
'''"Vato wanted it to be a sitcom."''' 
Another example of how deeply TV has invaded our thoughts.

==Page 180==
'''"I'm Chip! I'm Dale!"''' 
A sly comparison of chipmunks: Disney's cartoonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_%27n_Dale Chip 'n Dale] v. Bagdasarian's sonic Alvin, Simon, and Theodore ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chipmunks "Alvin and the Chipmunks"]).

==Page 186==
'''"octogenarihexation"''' 
86'd = thrown out, usually in reference to a drinking establishment. Is it a coincidence that this occurs on page 186? [[Chapter_15#Page_342|See also 43'd, p.342...]]

'''"Yuroks"''' 
The native American Yurok tribe lives along the lower 36 miles of the Klamath River, and along the California coast from Wilson Creek to Trinidad Bay. This may provide a clue to the location of Vineland County. Being Indians, the Yuroks are, naturally, preterite in the Pynchon universe. The woge (note lower case) seem to be Yurok thanatoids, therefore ultra-preterite.

==Page 187==
'''"Bernard Herrmann"''' 
The famous film composer, whose credits include, among many other great picture soundtracks, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock's] classics [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_%281960_film%29 ''Psycho''] [1960] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_%28film%29 ''Vertigo'' [1958].

'''"A Toyota in the treetops"''' 
Is this a tip of the hat to the boat in the tree in Marquez's famous novel of magic realism, ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''?

'''"...vanish unaccountably between Shade Creek and the V & B pound, as Thanatoid units...had been known to do..."''' 
Vanishing Thanatoid cars may push the envelope of fantasy a bit too far. And yet, and yet... They wind up in the tops of trees, you see. It's kind of like 'toon cars: 'toons can drive real cars, real people can drive 'toon cars. Plus, it sets up (much later) the disappearance of Vond's ride in Chapter 15.

==Page 188==
'''Sate..."''' 
A totally abrupt scene-change to Takeshi's, a literary jump cut.

'''"Weed Atman"''' 
Another great name. Weed = marijuana. And Weed is a city in Northern California. Also perhaps, an echo of Steven Weed, abandoned boyfriend of heiress Patty Hearst, which raises a very faint reverberation of Frenesi as Patty-in-reverse. Atman = Hindu for breath, the principle of life, the World Soul.

'''"Prairie was hearing this, in her turn, from DL..."''' 
Prairie breaks into the narrative, bouncing us unexpectedly back to the present. These abrupt break-ins by Prairie are fun.

==Page 189==
'''"Variety Loaves...not, as once supposed, safely dead but no, only, queerly, sleeping..."''' 
Thanatoid lunch meat!

==Page 190==
'''"Me gotta go"''' 
A line from Richard Berry's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie "Louie Louie], made famous by the Kingsmen."

==Page 191==
'''"FFAR"''' 
Folding Fin Aircraft Rocket Launcher, a rather nasty device attached to Apache helicopters around about the time Pynchon was writing Vineland.

'''"Kick Out the Jambs"''' 
Definitely a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_5 the MC 5] tune "Kick Out the Jams." But is "jambs" a typo or a pun?
{{Vineland PbP}}

Chapter 9

2009-07-19T05:22:04Z

Hugo Ball: /* Page 186 */

{{Vineland PbP Text}}

==Page 130==
'''"Fresson process studio photograph"''' 
Photographic printing process that uses coal to produce paper prints with a unique luminosity and grain. Fresson printing produces an image that is characteristically diffused and subtle, reminiscent of the "pointillism" of Impressionist painting. The image is extremely stable; Fresson printing is considered the most archival of any color procedure in use today.

==Page 131==
'''"If you want real ninja product..."''' 
The whole sequence about hiring an assassin is pure cyberpunk schtick.

'''"The Vibrating Palm"''' 
This may be a subtle reference to the old joke-store "buzzer" or "shocker" -- and resonates nicely with the rubber scampi on the previous page.

'''"YakMaf"''' 
Yakuza/Mafia.

==Page 133==
'''"legendary in the dopers' community"''' 
Olympic Boulevard, in Los Angeles, is a major arterial road stretching from 4th Street on the western end of Santa Monica to East Los Angeles -- farther than Wilshire Boulevard and most other streets. Why is the gas station toilet legendary? And why would DL care anyway? All she needs to do is change into her disguise.

In his 2009 psychedelic noir novel ''Inherent Vice'', Pynchon mentions another legendary restroom near Los Angeles:

:"the notorious Oscar's, right across the border from Tijuana, where the toilets were seething round the clock with junkies new and old who'd just scored in Mexico, put the product inside rubber balloons and swallowed them, then crossed back into the U.S. to vomit them back up again." (p.37)

Because this restroom is right across the border, it's not the "legendary" toilet on Olympic Boulevard.

'''"baby-blue shadows..."''' 
Nice description and a precursor to the color of Frenesi's eyes.

==Page 134==
'''"beige hose, white underwear..."''' 
Pynchon's description of DL's Clark Kent outfits is surprisingly accurate, especially for a male. It's like giving the O-O (see note, [[Chapter_6#Page_79|p. 79]]) to a nice Midwestern girl, circa 1960.

==Page 135==
'''"She wasn't sure right away that being sold into white slavery would turn out to be at all beneficial as a career step..."''' 
The kidnap-and-auction sequence is good, fast-moving storytelling: breathless, tense, gripping, light on flashy effects. This is also familiar cyberpunk territory, especially the interview with Wayvone.

==Page 136==
'''"older gentlemen with fingertip deficiencies..."''' 
Yakuza who have screwed up, and demonstrated their remorse by cutting off a fingertip.

==Page 139==
'''"Ufa, mi tratt' a pesci in faccia..."''' 
Literally, "Oof, you've thrown a fish in my face!" It's an ominous Sicilian warning meaning, "You've insulted me most unpleasantly, treated me in the worst possible way!"

==Page 141==
'''"I knew it!"''' 
Prairie breaking into the seamless narrative is almost a Brechtian alienation effect. By now the story is moving so strongly that we've totally forgotten the "as-told-to" frame.

'''"How could [Frenesi] have ever gone near somebody like this Brock guy?"''' 
Good question. Pynchon never really answers it -- unless we accept the idea of Frenesi embodying America's fatal fascination with authority.

'''"what-is-reality exercises"''' 
Reminiscent of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.

'''"Ninja Death Touch calculator"''' 
This joke strikes another false note. The entire sub-plot revolving around the Vibrating Palm is broad comedy, of course, but this smart-ass gag is severely out-of-scale.

==Page 142==
'''"might as well stay home -- watch a Run Run Shaw movie!"''' 
Hong-Kong-based Run-Run Shaw produced the popular (and violent) Bruce Lee karate flicks, also lots of action-packed swords and sorcery adventures (like the ones that clearly inspired a lot of the DL and Takeshi sub-plot).

'''"yellow headlamps of the tech squads..."''' 
The scene in the Footprint is reminiscent of the monolith excavation on the moon in 2001. Also, most of the Japanese dialogue is phrased in Pynchon's unique, sounds-just-like-a-movie style.

'''"...the shadowy world conglomerate Chipco..."''' 
This imaginary entity (an echo, perhaps of the sinister YoYoDyne Corporation in The Crying of Lot 49) is presumably some Intel-like company whose microprocessor chips are sold world wide. No doubt the chips are designed to keep a covert watch on everything, and report back to Chipco -- similar to Byron the Bulb and his fellow gridmates in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''"gigantic animal footprint"''' 
Godzilla's size is pretty well known, and this (as we shall see) sauroid footprint is too large to be that of the big G. However, Godzilla is a product of Japanese movie model technology of the fifties, so who knows what the eighties might bring?

'''"Wawazume Life & Non-Life"''' 
Is this a joke? And what kind? Maybe they insure things other than lives. Maybe Thanatoids get "non-life" insurance. Or it could just be a satirically "tactful" Japanese way of referring to death.

==Page 143==
'''"By the time...gods of the sky."''' 
Note that this immensely long and complicated sentence takes up more than half the page!

==Page 145==
'''"Singapore Sling"''' 
A frivolous cocktail with a pleasant flavor and a lethal punch: the signature drink of the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, a British colony taken by the Japanese in WWII. Conceivably, Minoru might have been stationed there, and picked up a liking for this tourist syrup.

==Page 146==
'''"Chuck, the world's most invisible robot"''' 
Like the fastest draw in the West. Want to see it again?

'''"some planet-wide struggle had been going on for years"''' 
More Pynchonian paranoia.

'''"the Himalayan caper"''' 
Story is written in mock Le Carre shorthand. Here (as elsewhere) Pynchon penetrates to the essence of a genre and gives us a few masterly strokes that evoke the same effect as an entire novel by a lesser writer.

'''"Semtex"''' 
For many years, Semtex has been the plastic explosive of choice for sophisticated aircraft bombers and other terrorists.

'''"pirate ships of the stratosphere"''' 
Presumably, they mount attacks like the one on the Kahuna flight.

==Page 147==
'''"Kutsushita-san!"''' 
lit. "Mr. Socks!"

'''"We called you the Kid."''' 
As in, "I never did the Kenosha Kid?" (See Gravity's Rainbow, p. 60.)

'''"disco music coming out the club doors"''' 
Cyberpunk atmosphere.

==Page 148==
'''"The Yak Doc Workshop"''' 
This may be a riff on Doc Yak, a comic book character.

'''"Takeshi...saw Vond...and thought...it was himself..."''' 
Vond and Takeshi look alike. Does this, as they say, signify? Takeshi as anti-Vond? It's hard to imagine a dark Japanese and a light Caucasian looking alike, but anyway, there's one for each of the tomatoes: an adjuster (insurance or karma, ma'am?) for DL, and a badass for Frenesi.

'''"''gaijin''"''' 
Japanese for foreigner, stranger, outsider.

==Page 149==
'''"Found a cab"''' 
Once again Prairie startles us by breaking into the gripping flashback narrative, but this time the present-tense Takeshi breaks in with her, having just arrived at the SKA retreat. Very cinematic. Takeshi moves instantaneously from past to present, a double-exposure match-dissolve effect.

'''"Moe!"''' 
The first of several references to [http://en.wikipedia.org/Three_stooges The Three Stooges], a nothing-if-not-preterite comedy trio specializing in crude, cruel slapstick.

'''"fingering its smooth rigid contours"''' 
The mock-porno is cute.

==Page 151==
'''"I couldn't see shit."''' 
DL mistakes Takeshi for Vond because of her fuzzy contact lenses. This mistaken-identity riff is worthy of Shakespeare at his most far-fetched and funny.

'''"Eeoo!"''' 
Flash! Pynchon's ear fails! This just isn't as close to the Valspeak expression of disgust as we expect from our boy. The transliteration needs a little more "u" or something.

==Page 153==
'''"Fuckin' Vond. He's the Roadrunner."''' 
Yes, he is.

==Page 154==
'''"Licensed DOM's"''' 
Doctor of Medicine?

==Page 155==
'''"Ninjette Coffee Mess"''' 
Navspeak. In the military, particularly the Navy, coffee mess is a little area where the coffee maker, cups, etc. are kept.

==Page 156==
'''"dorai kuriiningu"''' 
"dry cleaner" More Jive Japlish.

'''"perchloroethylene"''' 
A highly toxic chemical often used for cleaning movie film.

==Page 157==
'''"Not a bar, Fumimota-san."''' 
Silly joke, nicely placed.

==Page 158==
'''"Evoex"''' 
The etymology of this new tranquilizer is clearly from the bacchanalian ejaculation (and crossword puzzle word) "evoe!"

==Page 159==
'''"Michiko Yomama"''' 
A nasty pun, based on the black insult, "Yo' mama!" Let your guard down for a second, and the guy slips in one of these every time.

==Page 160==
'''"Nukey"''' 
Orgasm and atomic detonation meet in one of Pynchon's most awful/wonderful puns (nuke = nookey).

==Page 161==
'''"technically dead"''' 
Since Takeshi lives without fear, this makes him a perfect samurai, and echoes the idea on p. 29 about how a samurai is always prepared to die.

==Page 162==
'''"Just Like a William Powell"''' 
Echoes "Like a Meat Loaf" (p. 363), and, of course, Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."

==Page 163==
'''"Which reminds me, about your PX bill..."''' 
If you had any doubts about the samurai/ninjette subplot being for laughs, this page should convince you.

==Page 164==
'''"Puncutron"''' 
An imaginary therapeutic device whose name suggests an infernal combination of eastern medicine (acupuncture) and high-energy western technology (cyclotron). There's a bit of "punk" in there, too.

'''"Detractors included...managed to keep."''' 
A silly sentence, written in painful mock-German syntax for no discernible reason.

'''"Taiwanese Healthy Brain Aerobics"''' 
More foolishness, this time mixed with music. The selection of tapes for Puncutron listening includes The All-Regimental Bagpipes play Prime Time Favorites (the Tube again!), and perhaps Pynchon's best judgmental title: The Chipmunks Sing Marvin Hamlisch.

==Page 166==
'''"...men convinced us that we were the natural administrators of this thing 'morality'..."''' 
Sister Rochelle's feminist Eden parable suggests an interesting modern scenario: Frenesi = Eve, DL = Lilith, Vond = Serpent. This would help explain Frenesi/America's irresistible attraction for the authoritarian Vond.

==Page 167==
'''"The Ordeal of the Thousand Broadway Show Tunes"''' 
Transcendental malarkey.

'''"YOUR MAMA EATS, how can we resist?"''' 
Aggro dining.

==Page 169==
'''"Cheapsat"''' 
Preterite communications personified.

==Page 170==
'''"Like Death, Only Different."''' 
While this is a nice definition of the "oid" suffix, it begs the question of exactly what Thanatoid's are.

'''"But we watch a lot of Tube"''' 
Thanatoids watch lots of TV, trying to advance further into the condition of death. This makes them Reaganite kids? Couch potatoes? Embittered hippies? Everyone in America? Anyway, advancing further into the condition of death is only a restatement of the law of entropy, which may mean that everyone in the universe is a Thanatoid.

==Page 171==
'''"checking the edges of the frame."''' 
Does this mean Takeshi's in a film? Or is Pynchon just grabbing a handy cinema term?

'''"go the opposite way! Back to life!"''' 
This anti-entropic movement makes Takeshi a great hero, a symbol of intelligence (the only truly anti-entropic entity), the life force.

==Page 172==
'''"Shade"''' 
(as in Shade Creek) = ghost.

'''"thick fluids in flexible containers"''' 
i.e., scumbags

'''"The Woodbine Motel"''' 
Harks back, perchance, to the 1870's, the Union Pacific railroad scandal, and the Credit Mobilier. When one party was asked, under oath, where the money was, he replied that it had "gone where the woodbine twineth."

'''"The Zero Inn"''' 
Very thanatoid, preterite and Zoyd-like. Also another zero.

==Page 173==
'''Thanatoids are "victims of karmic imbalances unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..."''' 
So are the Thanatoids victims of the Seventies? Or another version of the preterites in Gravity's Rainbow? Maybe they're just over-determined ghosts of some sort. This description is similar to the kind of thing that psychics talk about when they're trying to make your poltergeists go away; it's the unresolved baggage that keeps the ghosties on the move, and out of wherever they belong. Remember, too, that Shade Creek is "a psychic jumping-off town" where the Thanatoids wait "for the data necessary to pursue their needs and aims (i.e., ghostlike revenge) among the still living..." ([[#Page 171|p. 171]])

'''"Although the streets were irregular and steeply pitched..."''' 
The description is an attempt to capture the effect of an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher M.C. Escher] drawing or perhaps the Expressionist sets in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligari ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari''] [1920].

==Page 174==
'''Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them."''' 
Here they seem like left-over hippies, Vietnam vets, America's victims. Preterites who want revenge.

'''"The amount of memory on a chip doubles every year and a half!"''' 
Sounds like a variant on Moore's Law, that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

==Page 175==
'''"Karmic adjustment"''' 
Well, yes, it's a nice progression from insurance adjustment, but what does Takeshi actually do? Prairie is still wondering on page 192, and DL never lets on. In any case, it looks like these Thanatoids are dead California yuppies; a resource to be exploited by preterite tradesmen.

'''"interesting work with airplanes"''' 
So, during World War II Takeshi was a kamikaze hence the same Takeshi who's in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']! (See Viking edition, [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-700 page 690]) This brings up an interesting, though peripheral issue: As a Kamikaze, Takeshi flew a Zero. A-and there's a reference on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_663-673 page 672] (of ''GR'') to "Zeros bearing comrades away," reminding us of those human lives as binary code in God's PC. As noted, there are lots of other "zero" reverences (that's a pun, not a typo) in ''Vineland''.

==Page 176==
'''"Domo komarimashita!"''' 
Japanese for "Thanks a lot!" or "You're welcome."

==Page 178==
'''"Interpersonal Programming and the Problem Towee"''' 
Pynchon definitely has an attitude on this kind of California stuff. He also seems to have a grudge against Mercedes drivers.

'''"Sounds like the team I bet on last week."''' 
Vato gets to make the bad pun this time. This is a great montage of the growing relationship between Vato, Blood, Takeshi, and DL.

==Page 179==
'''"Vato wanted it to be a sitcom."''' 
Another example of how deeply TV has invaded our thoughts.

==Page 180==
'''"I'm Chip! I'm Dale!"''' 
A sly comparison of chipmunks: Disney's cartoonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_%27n_Dale Chip 'n Dale] v. Bagdasarian's sonic Alvin, Simon, and Theodore ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chipmunks "Alvin and the Chipmunks"]).

==Page 186==
'''"octogenarihexation"''' 
86'd = thrown out, usually in reference to a drinking establishment. Is it a coincidence that this occurs on page 186? [[Chapter_15#Page_342|See also 43'd, p.342...]]

'''"Yuroks"''' 
The native American Yurok tribe lives along the lower 36 miles of the Klamath River, and along the California coast from Wilson Creek to Trinidad Bay. This may provide a clue to the location of Vineland County. Being Indians, the Yuroks are, naturally, preterite in the Pynchon universe. The woge (note lower case) seem to be Yurok thanatoids, therefore ultra-preterite.

==Page 187==
'''"Bernard Herrmann"''' 
The famous film composer, whose credits include, among many other great picture soundtracks, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock's] classics [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_%281960_film%29 ''Psycho''] [1960] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_%28film%29 ''Vertigo'' [1958].

'''"A Toyota in the treetops"''' 
Is this a tip of the hat to the boat in the tree in Marquez's famous novel of magic realism, ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''?

'''"...vanish unaccountably between Shade Creek and the V & B pound, as Thanatoid units...had been known to do..."''' 
Vanishing Thanatoid cars may push the envelope of fantasy a bit too far. And yet, and yet... They wind up in the tops of trees, you see. It's kind of like 'toon cars: 'toons can drive real cars, real people can drive 'toon cars. Plus, it sets up (much later) the disappearance of Vond's ride in Chapter 15.

==Page 188==
'''Sate..."''' 
A totally abrupt scene-change to Takeshi's, a literary jump cut.

'''"Weed Atman"''' 
Another great name. Weed = marijuana. Also perhaps, an echo of Steven Weed, abandoned boyfriend of heiress Patty Hearst, which raises a very faint reverberation of Frenesi as Patty-in-reverse. Atman = Hindu for breath, the principle of life, the World Soul.

'''"Prairie was hearing this, in her turn, from DL..."''' 
Prairie breaks into the narrative, bouncing us unexpectedly back to the present. These abrupt break-ins by Prairie are fun.

==Page 189==
'''"Variety Loaves...not, as once supposed, safely dead but no, only, queerly, sleeping..."''' 
Thanatoid lunch meat!

==Page 190==
'''"Me gotta go"''' 
A line from Richard Berry's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie "Louie Louie], made famous by the Kingsmen."

==Page 191==
'''"FFAR"''' 
Folding Fin Aircraft Rocket Launcher, a rather nasty device attached to Apache helicopters around about the time Pynchon was writing Vineland.

'''"Kick Out the Jambs"''' 
Definitely a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_5 the MC 5] tune "Kick Out the Jams." But is "jambs" a typo or a pun?
{{Vineland PbP}}