By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
I would like to thank my mother-in-law, an Artie Shaw fan, for teaching me how to pronounce Frenesi. The first few times I read Vineland I pronounced it Fre-nes-i instead of Fren-i-si.
The last time I heard Tim Leary talk I asked him what he thought about Vineland. He didn’t seem to like the question, replying something like, “Oh, you want a personal opinion?” He said he didn’t like the novel very much, but he did like the tubal detox stuff.
I find it humbling to reread a novel I thought I knew very well and to find so much material I had forgotten. I had forgotten about Zoyd astrally projecting to watch Frenesi. Coincidentally yesterday I watched The Wizard of Oz with two of my grandkids, and the scene where Dorothy calls for Auntie Em and then sees her in the crystal ball reminded me of Zoyd astrally projecting to watch Frenesi. (Pynchon has a great bit about The Wizard of Oz in Inherent Vice.) When the image of Auntie Em turns into the witch and the witch breaks the fourth wall and looks directly into the camera, I wondered, “Might one imagine this as Pynchon looking out of the book at us?”
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