'Vineland' reading group, Chapter One

 

Zoyd Wheeler AI image generated by Brisa and Clara

This week: pages 3 – 13 (Penguin edition)

By OZ FRITZ

Special guest blogger

“Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive”

– Jackson Browne, Running On Empty

“Quite simply, one of those books that will make this world – our world, our daily chemical-preservative, plastic-wrapped bread – a little more tolerable, a little more human”

– Frank McConnell, L.A. Times Book Review on Vineland

Reading Vineland feels like eating comfort food to me. Not because it goes down easily or has a straight-ahead plot, far from it. Though much friendlier to digest than the Pynchon Epics, nevertheless, it still requires more than average attention to follow all the plot twists and turns and the constantly shifting  time perspective. It takes place in 1984, but with many flashbacks to the ‘60s or 70s and occasionally a

look back into earlier times for background context. It seems, sometimes, to have flashbacks within flashbacks. This period piece comes chocked full of extensive cultural references to recreate the mood and ambience of that era. Trekkies, this is for you! Though I often say, “nostalgia ain’t what it used to be”, the nostalgia within these pages comforts me.

Vineland proves without a doubt that a book can be both highly enjoyable and didactic. Pain

management seems one of its great lessons/transmissions frequently coming through the delicious, but

often dry humor that pervades these pages like banana peels in silent films. The opening quote from

Johnny Copeland reveals the first pun: cope + land. How do we cope with this land in these crazy times?

But I get ahead of myself.

I started reading Thomas Pynchon after Eric Wagner invited me to participate in a group about to start in on examining Against the Day. His pitch to me: “I think you’ll enjoy it.” Before accepting, I found and perused the beginning of it online. After reading the first couple of pages, I immediately said YES! I saw clearly that Pynchon uses a lexicon of associations and correspondences familiar to me. This surprised the heck out of me. The only other contemporary fiction writers using a similar lexicon I knew of were Robert Anton Wilson and EJ Gold.

The lexicon derives in part from Hermetic processes, James Joyce, Sufi-style thought like the 4th Way, and all the pop culture references. You don’t need to know any of that to enjoy the allegorical depth of the book. The interested and attentive reader will construct their own lexicon of connections possibly without realizing it. From the music references alone one can come up with a concordance of evocative imagery. These correspondences, associations, connections, inside jokes and “easter eggs” provide a non-verbal, telepathic-like form of communication.

Vineland is a fictional town on the coast of Northern California. Enough references to real places are given to roughly place it somewhere above Eureka. It’s believed Pynchon lived in the area for about a decade sometime during the 70s and 80s. He’s rumored to have spent time in Arcata which is slightly north of Eureka. Most, but not all of the locations in Vineland really exist.

I assert that Robert Anton Wilson had a more profound influence on Pynchon than appears commonly recognized. I have seen more than one resonance between Schrödinger’s Cat and Vineland; meaning Wilson strikes a note and Pynchon tunes into and amplifies the same vibration as if in a literary universe next door (maybe). Pynchon’s dedication to his parents that begins Vineland when transposed to Cabala = the Hebrew letter Daleth which has the English translation “door”. Looked at from the angle of Literary Alchemical Manuals, Vineland appears the universe next door to Schrödinger’s Cat.

RAW begins The Universe Next Door, which begins SC, with (allegedly) a quote from Jesus in The Gospel of Thomas: “Not until the male become female and the female becomes male shall ye enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Along with Wilson the integration of female intelligence with male to lift off the Earth has been strongly advocated in recent times by Timothy Leary, James Joyce, Aleister Crowley, Gilles Deleuze and E.J. Gold, among others.

Meet Zoyd Wheeler as he wakes up to a new day. Zoyd reminds me of the character Zonker Harris from the comic strip Doonesbury. His “job” is to cross dress as a woman, jump through a window, and act crazy to continue collecting government benefits. Scenes of him interacting with real macho lumberjacks who themselves appear a touch more feminine than usual by being all gussied up emphasize the theme. He pulls out a ladies chain saw; observe the shaman in action surrounded by “men” i.e. earthbound domesticated primates:

“’Easy there cowgirl, now things’re just fine,’ the logger stepping back as Zoyd, he hoped demurely, yanked at a silk cord on a dainty starter pulley, and the ladies pearl-handled chain saw spun into action.” Going one level deeper, pearl corresponds with the moon, a traditional association with the feminine and one that Pynchon explores explicitly later on.

The window Zoyd crashes through, an annual televised tradition to collect benefits, represents the forces that oppose the integration of Female Intelligence, the resistance that has to be jumped through – unbalanced, destructive, fascist male energy; the kind that starts wars. Pynchon will directly connect penis with a gun more than once as we climb the vine. Window is the English translation of the Hebrew Ayin which corresponds to The Devil in the Tarot. This card represents unbridled male force which can be creatively used. TRP, as he gets signified on the internet (Thomas Ruggles Pynchon) gives a clear image of this male force opposition near the end of the chapter. The establishment where Wheeler jumps through the window in front of TV cameras is the Cucumber Lounge: “News-crew stragglers were picking up a few last location shots of the Cuke and its famous rotating sign, which Ralph Jr. was happy to light up early, a huge green neon cucumber with blinking warts, cocked at an angle that approached, within a degree or two, a certain vulgarity.”

Again, one level further: Cucumber Lounge, C + L = 38 = “To make a hole, hollow; to violate”; the alchemical process as it concerns the formation of bodies in the Higher Dimensions (Circuits 5 – 8 in Leary’s model). The creation of these bodies involves an accumulation of substances until they crystallize into a more stable form which isn’t easy. Prior to this crystallization, these accumulated substances can be taken, stolen or lost. This explains why Leary (a great TRP lover as has been mentioned) calls extended awareness in the higher circuits volatile. 38 signifies this “spiritual” substance getting lost or stolen. This theft, occurring either internally or externally, can often be traced to subtle or brutal unbalanced male force. A prominent theme in Vineland concerns this dichotomy or battle between unbalanced yang and receptive yin and the resolution in their marriage or partnership . . . or not. An image of this resolution begins Vineland with TRP’s dedication to his parents. This battle appears most evident between the two primary characters, Brock Vond and Frenesi Gates. Vond enters the picture in chapter 4, but is mostly spoken of in the third person until the end. Frenesi, frequently present by her absence (a Joycean technique I learned about from RAW) shows up in the first person at the beginning of chapter 6. Zoyd Wheeler, the protagonist in the first five chapters, exits stage left when Frenesi comes on set and doesn’t really substantially return until the end of the book.

Some further notes on chapter one: we meet another primary character, Zoyd and Frenesi’s daughter Prairie, in the second paragraph. Like her mother, Prairie’s presence gets introduced by her absence. She leaves a note saying she left with her friend Thapsia. To my recollection, which could be incomplete, Thapsia never gets mentioned again in the book. The name comes from a plant found in North Africa along the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic coast of Morocco and Portugal, thapsia, used in ancient medicine as a pain reliever. The chemical compound derived from it is currently in clinical trials for cancer treatment. It’s been shown to kill tumor cells.

Pairing Prairie with Thapsia underscores the pain management theme. Prairie will experience some of the deepest and most obvious pain in the novel with the search for her mother whom she never knew. The search for Mother in the archetypal sense appears a main theme of Vineland. Like Finnegans Wake, and probably many other profound works of literature, Pynchon introduces his main themes right away.

The squadron of blue jays stomping around the roof that morphed into carrier pigeons bringing subconscious messages to Zoyd in his dreams connects with Binah, the qabalistic sphere home to the Great Mother archetype through its correspondence with the color blue. This association, blue = Binah, gets affirmed when we learn that Frenesi has “eyes of blue painted blue” as Pynchon writes to emphasize their blueness. Both Frenesi’s mother Sasha and Prairie have startlingly blue eyes. Crowley as Aiwass describes Nuit, his Goddess figure as “a lambent flame of blue.” Pynchon connects blue in this way in other instances my favorite being when he randomly brings up: “from faraway Anaheim Stadium, came the sounds of a Blue Cheer concert” (p. 247). Heim is German for home making Anaheim the home of Ana connecting Blue Cheer with Joyce’s Mother archetype in Finnegans Wake, Anna Livia Plurabelle. All that being said, I don’t think that every time the color blue comes up that it necessarily points to Binah; skepticism and intuition seem integral to reading these semiotics.

Possible synchronicities: with Zoyd dressing in drag I find it significant that we start this voyage on the last day of Pride month. Yesterday, someone used colored chalk to draw a ladder-like hopscotch type of thing on the sidewalk by the kids area of the gym I go to. They captioned it: “climb the vine.” I have a gig in Fort Bragg on the northern California coast coming up on July 3 rd and 4th . It’s a little south of the novel’s titular location, but in the same relative neighborhood and physically the closest I’ve come to staying in Vineland. Pynchon is rumored to have lived in Fort Bragg for a spell. I’m there to do a live recording of a local band called Queer Country.

Fans of the original Star Trek series will love all the references to it throughout the book. These begin in the first chapter. The show Wheel of Fortune makes a pun on Zoyd’s last name and a tarot card at the end of this chapter. Vineland has been accurately called a black comedy. I find “black comedy” synonymous with “pain management.”

Next week: Please read chapter 2, pages 14 – 21.

Maybe Day is getting closer

Just a reminder that Maybe Day, July 23, is getting closer, and Bobby suggesting that everyone try to set up in person events this time. (See above for Bobby's event.)

Here's Bobby: "I'd very much like to encourage other Maybe Day events to be held around the world! Or if not events, maybe friendly gatherings, or even casual outings. Hell, just take a nice long walk and look for some quarters! Anything that brings the spirit of Maybe Logic out into the real world, in whatever way great or small, public or personal.

"If you are planning a public event, please feel free to share the details, so we can help promote it! Send Maybe Day event listings to weirdoverse@gmail.com."

I am kicking around some ideas, nothing to  announce yet. 

The Friedrich Nietzsche podcast is worth a listen

I wanted to mention that I recently had a long car drive and so found it convenient to listen to all of the May Hilaritas Press podcast on Friedrich Nietzsche, with Mike Gathers interviewing Eric Wagner. I found it a worthwhile use of my listening time. Eric worked hard on this podcast, re-reading a great deal of Nietzsche to prepare for it. He remarks that while Nietzsche, like RAW, tends to pull the rug from under the reader, RAW is cheerful about it while Nietzsche has a tendency to be hateful. Eric also offers thoughts on where the new Nietzsche reader might begin. 

My 2017 post on RAW and Nietzsche is here, the comments to the post are useful. 

Wilson and Shea on 'Moon of Ice'

The late Brad Linaweaver won the Prometheus Award in 1989 for his novel, Moon of Ice. The book apparently has gone out of print, but I thought I would note that both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea praised the book, and obviously anyone who wishes may hunt up a used copy. 

In Quantum Psychology, Chapter 16, Robert Anton Wilson writes, "The Nazis believed the Moon consisted of solid ice. Brad Linaweaver's superb science fiction novel, Moon of Ice, concerns a parallel universe where World War II ended in a truce, rather than total victory for the allies. In Nazi Europe, the "moon of ice" theory still reigns supreme in government-run universities, learned societies, etc. while in anarchist America (in that universe, we become pacifist, isolationist and finally anarchist) the orthodox model of the moon remains dominant. When tbe Nazis land a spaceship on the moon and find no ice, all the data of the flight becomes Top Secret and the Europeans never learn of it."

Robert Shea, in the summer 1989 issue of the Prometheus, newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society:

June 23, 1989

Dear Editor:

I quite agree with Victoria Varga that more favorable reviews of Moon of Ice by Brad Linaweaver may be redundant, but I can't resist adding a few more words of praise to her comments in the last issue of Prometheus. Moon of Ice, clearly the product of libertarian thinking, performs the valuable service of showing us what the U.S. might be like as a much more free society than the one we've got. It is also an artistic achievement with an ingenious structure that allows us to compare two opposite societies and two opposite personalities. Moon balances a U.S. better off than the one we've got today, portrayed in the frame story, against a Europe far worse off than the one that exists in the "real" world, as portrayed in the diaries of the Goebbels, father and daughter. The contrast of liberty and tyranny is carried through in the juxtaposition of the diaries of the anarchist Hilda Goebbels and her Nazi father Josef.

Both Hilda and Dr. Goebbels are wonderful characters. Hilda's dry—and sometimes gallows— humor is delightful. And not too many authors have been able to present us with a credible and understandable portrayal of the mind of one of the principal architects of Nazism. These two creations are feats of imaginative empathy. With all due respect to the other contenders, a Prometheus Award for Moon of Ice would be well deserved.

--Robert Shea

Testament reading group continues

I wanted to note that the third episode of the Testament reading group has been posted at Jechidah. The first and second episodes remain up, so it's easy to get caught up. 

How to make a video about the Illuminati

 

Nieman Lab, a website aimed at journalists, has an article up about a new app aimed at helping journalists turn an article until a video for smartphones.

Eagle-eyed Ron Hogan wrote to me to point out something amusing: The example in the illustration, above, concerns the Illuminati.

If you are having trouble reading it, some of it (there are variations between the two examples) says,

"Did the Illuminati start as a parody?

"Yes, and that's quite a twist.

"They invented tales of a secret society,  the Illuminati, to make people question reality.

"This myth, born from a parody text called Principia Discordia...

"This anti-establishment text inspired  influential thinkers like Robert Anton Wilson and Kerry Thornley." 

Ron Hogan has a Substack. 

The app's inventor, Sophia Smith Galer, possibly a RAW fan, has an official website. 

Hilaritas podcast: Mariana Pinzón

 

The latest Hilaritas Press podcast, released Monday, features guest host Zach West interviewing Mariana Pinzón on Octomantic Neuro-Hacking and more. See the official page for links that provide more information. 

Pinzón also was interviewed for episode 22, by Mike Gathers, on "on ChaoSurfing the eight circuits of consciousness and the eight colors of chaos magick."

'Vineland' online reading group begins

By Eric Wagner
Special guest blogger 

Vineland Introduction 

My friend Paul Chuey first told me about Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 in 1982. We both loved Wilson and Leary's writing, and Leary's writing about Gravity's Rainbow intrigued us. Paul got me Gravity's Rainbow for Christmas in 1983. It took me four years to read it, and I then read The Crying of Lot 49, V and Slow Learner. In 1990 when Vineland came out in 1990, I found myself broke, but I kept having dreams about buying Vineland, so I splurged on the hardcover. I expected a struggle reading it, but instead I finished it in four days. I felt like I had climbed a flight of stairs and at the end stumbled because I expected more steps. I loved that book so much, and I still do. I have reread it over and over again. I bought his next four books on the first day of publication. 

In the eighties, before the announcement of the publication of Vineland, people speculated that Pynchon might never write another novel after Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). Various rumors spread about Pynchon. He had become obsessed with The Brady Bunch. He had lost all his money and wrote Godzilla screenplays. When I first read Vineland, I loved how Pynchon incorporated these theories into the novel.  

For this study group we will read one chapter a week, starting next Monday, June 30. Oz Fritz will write the posts for the odd numbered chapters. I will write the posts for the even numbered chapters, and we will finish up just in time for the publication of Pynchon’s new novel Shadow Ticket on October 7 

June 30        Chapter 1 

July 7           Chapter 2 

July 14         Chapter 3 

July 21        Chapter 4 

July 28        Chapter 5 

August 4        Chapter 6 

August 11        Chapter 7 

August 18        Chapter 8 

August 25        Chapter 9 

September 1     Chapter 10 

September 8    Chapter 11 

September 15    Chapter 12 

September 22    Chapter 13 

September 29    Chapter 14 

Wilson and Shea's obituaries

Robert Anton Wilson and Robert J. Shea both largely launched their literary careers with the publication of Illuminatus! in 1975. I say "largely" because they both had publications in magazines for many years before, a couple of Wilson's Playboy Press books had come out before Illuminatus!, etc. I think it is a fair observation that that Illuminatus! is what made them known to most readers.

Most RAW fans will know that Wilson quit his job at Playboy and embarked on writing many other books, such as Cosmic Trigger 1 (1977) and the Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy (1979-1981). Shea did not leave Playboy, he was pushed out in a layoff, but it forced him to make good on his plan to develop his career as a novelist, and Shike came out in 1981.

Wilson became a "cult" author with a large following, while Shea, while successful, did not become famous, and their receptions when they died illustrate that.

Wilson's death prompted a decent-sized obituary in The New York Times. You can read it here.  He also got an obituary article in the Los Angeles Times, e.g., "Robert Anton Wilson, a futurist, philosopher and coauthor of the Illuminatus trilogy, a cult science fiction series about a secret global society, died Jan. 11 at his home in Capitola, Calif. He was 74." 

It is listed as a combination of "staff and wire reports," although I don't know what wire service carried the news. (My search of  the Associated Press archives did not turn up anything.)

I can't find any evidence that Robert Shea ever got any ink in the The New York Times.

But his did at least get a staff-written obituary in a big hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. Here are the first five paragraphs:

Robert Shea, 61, a writer, was co-author of the fantasy Illuminatus! trilogy books. He also wrote several historical novels and a book, "No Man's Land to Plaza del Lago," about the area along Sheridan Road that buffered Evanston and Wilmette.

A resident of Glencoe, he died Thursday in Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn.

The three volumes in the Illuminatus! series are "Eye in the Pyramid," "The Golden Apple" and "Leviathan." The books, written with Robert Anton Wilson, are satires of various conspiracy theories.

He and his co-author were associate editors of Playboy in the late 1960s before collaborating on the fantasy trilogy, which was first published in 1972.

His historical novels include a volume on medieval Japan, "Shike;" one on medieval Europe, "The Saracen"; and a story of the Blackhawk War in Illinois, "Shaman."

John Higgs at Glastonbury

 In his latest newsletter, John Higgs reports he will be appearing at the Glastonbury Festival:

The festival is June 25-29, and John reports, "I’m being interviewed by Robin Ince about Exterminate / Regenerate on Thursday at 3pm on the Science Futures Laboratory Stage. I’ll also be appearing at some point that evening on Robin’s ‘Nine Lessons for the Summer Solstice’ event on the same stage, where I’ll be reading something appropriate from Watling Street."

Still no announcement on John's new book, but "I’ll have news about my next book in the next newsletter, but I can tell you that it’s is coming pretty soon - it will be published in November."

There's other news, plus an essay on how bad social media has gotten. 

Today in library news

 

Branka Tesla writes to let me know that Straight Outta Dublin by Eric Wagner with R. Michael Johnson, published by Hilaritas Press, is now available at the UC Berkeley library. 

"I walked into their Main Library two weeks ago, had a pleasant conversation with the librarian and she handed me the Purchase Request Form and now Eric Wagner, Michael Johnson and Hilaritas Press are on the shelf.

"(I do not want to take all the credit for doing it. Maybe someone else also contributed.)"

This raises a couple of interesting points.

One, many libraries do allow patrons to request purchase of a title. I wanted to read the new Ada Palmer book, Inventing the Renaissance. It's kind of expensive and I filled out a form asking Cuyahoga County Public Library to buy it. The library purchased it and I am reading it now. Part of the reason I did that is that I want to support Ada Palmer, and now that the book is on the shelf (well, when I return it) other people can discover her. I'm guessing that Branka can in fact take credit. 

Also, don't forget that libraries have limited space. All libraries, as they acquire new books, have to get rid of some of the old ones to free up shelf space. I assume that some of that can be done by getting rid of multiple copies of former bestsellers that are no longer hot, but single titles that haven't been checked out in a long time also are obvious candidates. So when you check out a book by a favorite author, you are helping to keep that person's book in circulation. 

Would Illuminatus! be a publishing success today?

RAW fans, talking about how many times they have read Ulysses or about their Finnegans Wake discussion groups, seem out of step with the culture today. Literary fiction seems to be going out of style.

A Substack piece called "The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction" seems to document that literary fiction once sold well and now does not sell at all. It states, "No work of literary fiction has been on Publisher’s Weekly’s yearly top ten best-selling list since 2001."

I don't know that I agree with every claim made by the author, Oy, but most of his assertions seem to be correct.

A couple of other articles: In a blog post in April, I mentioned another Substack article, "The average college student today," which asserts, "Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke. By 'functionally illiterate' I mean 'unable to read and comprehend adult novels by people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers.' I picked those three authors because they are all recent Pulitzer Prize winners, an objective standard of 'serious adult novel.' Furthermore, I’ve read them all and can testify that they are brilliant, captivating writers; we’re not talking about Finnegans Wake here. But at the same time they aren’t YA, romantasy, or Harry Potter either."

Earlier this month, I read Lake of Darkness, the latest novel by British SF writer Adam Roberts. Its setting in the future depicts a society in which even scholars such as historians seldom have the ability to read and write. Why should you learn to read when an AI can read to you? It seemed like a convincing depiction of what we are moving toward. (Mostly, the book is a horror novel about black holes. I am fascinated by Roberts, who doesn't seem to get a lot of attention in the U.S.)

Illuminatus! was a riveting read for me when I stumbled across it in college, but at the time, I was also reading Nabokov and other literary fiction and a pretty wide variety of science fiction, including the more challenging stuff. Some people have found Illuminatus! a difficult read. Would it have done well if it (or something like it) were published today? I also feel uneasy about the reception Richard Powers, another of my favorites,  would receive if he were just starting out today. Would he sell enough books to be able to make a living and keep doing it? 

The world is in a dark place

 

A huge explosion in a building as a result of a bombing by Israeli warplanes. Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash, published in February, 2025. 

Last week, when Brian Wilson died and I visited Leon Russell's recording studio, I wondered what Robert Shea would say about the Beach Boys and Russell. (I am under the impression that Shea paid more attention to rock music than RAW. Shea for example was a big Beatles fan. ) This week, I wonder what the two Bobs, Wilson and Shea, would say about about all of the warfare in the world. Both were involved in the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War. Shea participated in more than one protest in Chicago, not just the one described in Illuminatus!. 

Let's see, the war between Russian and Ukraine is raging and if anything seems to be more intense. Israel, still fighting in Gaza, has bombed Syria and is now bombing Iran. One of the New York Times articles I read said the strikes and counter strikes between Israel and Iran may last for weeks, not days. So, what do we need to stumble into World War III? China deciding the world is distracted and it's a good time to make a move on Taiwan? Or is there some other trouble spot I'm not thinking of? The world seems in a dark place.