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?”
13 comments:
The Marquis de Sod might be my new favorite Pynchon character.
It has been a while since I read Pynchon. I think the last time was a pre-Pandemic reread of Inherent Vice. The last time I read one of his "epics" I believe I was just out of undergrad. I never bothered to read Vineland as I was impressionable and had read multiple opinions that it was a weak novel and overly concerned with the Eighties, a time period that I wasn't particuarly interested in at the time.
As Oz noted in his first write up, this is a novel about a lot of different periods over the course of the late twentieth century. It also has quite a bit in common with our own time. The talk about budget cuts earlier in the novel was pretty close to home.
While I was rereading The Crying of Lot 49 in a modern novel seminar, an older student talked about how well Pynchon captures the paranoia of the Sixties. I think that paranoia must have been coming through strong in the Eighties as well. Again, appropriate to the current day.
How do we know Artie Shaw pronounced it "FREN - uh - see" (rhymes with Hennessy?) and not "Fren-ESS -ee," as I too have internally pronounced it every time I read this novel?
I'm not doubting you or your mother-in-law. This is news to me and I'd like to know the source.
The song has lyrics, I think. Frenesi appears in the lyrics. Fren-e-si’. - ew
A “Tube-maddened detox escapee” on the run, suggestion of raising children on LSD, astral projection casually mentioned, cryptozoology… Things are already getting wild with this chapter!
The name Moonpie gives yet another reference to the Moon.
“Moon”, together with “tides, and planetary magnetism”, also plays a part in what Wheeler considers before attempting astral travel.
“On the chance that Frenesi, up late some 3:00 A.M. out of some Mr. Wonderful’s bed, would happen to pop the Tube on” (p.36).
As Zoyd fantasizes sadly about his ex-wife, Crowley indeed gives “separation” as having a numerical value of 300.
The Pynchon Wiki suggests that Frenesi is “likely pronounced ‘free 'n' easy’…” and that “Salman Rushdie points out that Frenesi is an anagram of free and sin.”
The BJM song Free and Easy originally appeared on their album Thank God for Mental Illness, a title that connects well to Zoyd Wheeler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzSB2Jg3EpE
Baba Havabananda, “saintly night manager” at Bodhi Dharma Pizza, reminds me of a similar pun in FW: “for here the ruah of Ecclectiastes of Hippo outpuffs the writress of Havvah-ban-Annah” (38.29).
If you’re starting to feel withdrawal symptoms, here’s a quick fix before the “Tubaldetox goon squad” get you into their paddy wagon, and “back to where they can help you”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm65YlcRmFg
Zoyd, Pynchon and myself all seem to enjoy outpuffing our ruach, although I personally seldom got “a dazzling revelation in scarlet and gold”, “in the likeness of an eightfold Pizzic Mandala” (p.51).
This reminds me of my time in Hawai'i when, usually puffed out of my mind, I would join the hippies going on Sundays for Krishna Pizza, the free vegan offerings of the local Hare Krishna branch, right in the jungle. Like at Bodhi Darhma Pizza, there also was chanting going on.
“So Bigfoot bein’ force majeure, we got the legal salvage rights.” (p.44)
Unrepentant Tubefreaks on the lookout for cathodic sightings might also be curious to know that there was a wave of Bigfoot-related films in the 70’s, mostly in the horror genre. One might for instance think of Bigfoot (1970, it “breeds with anything”), The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), Sasquatch (1976) or Night of the Demon (1980).
Interestingly, after a hiatus, Bigfoot then came back to the screen in the late 80’s, but more often than not in a family friendly context, starting with Harry and the Hendersons (1987), and followed by flicks such as Little Big Foot (1997) or Big and Hairy (1998), the latter featuring a basketball-playing Sasquatch. I cannot help but wonder if Pynchon saw the 1987 movie while writing Vineland…
“Zoyd could hear Little Charlie and the Nightcats singing ‘TV Crazy.’” (p.43)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBS_SEtT6_M
Eydie Gorme recorded "Frenesi" with lyrics.
I like the image of Pynchon looking out at us from the book.
Frenesi is a Spanish word that translates to frenzy; except it's spelled with an accent in Spanish - frenesÃ. One will notice this accent on the i when Hector speaks. I use the Spanish pronunciation: freh-neh-SEE. We discover later in the adventure (p. 75) that Frenesi got named from the song by Artie Shaw that "was all over the jukeboxes and airwaves in the last days of the war, when Hub and Sasha were falling in love."
Frenesi named after an Artie Shaw song as told in the story; Zoyd very likely named after the experimental band Art Zoyd by Pynchon gives us the word ART common to the couple in what has been called his metalinguistics. I will explore metalinguistics more in the next post. Art can be called a qabalistic formula since it = 210 in gematria. RAW explains it somewhere, maybe in the Historical Illuminatus Chronicals. Two becomes one then none - so ideal for couples work like Frenesi & Zoyd, or Hub & Sasha.
Spookah quoted: “On the chance that Frenesi, up late some 3:00 A.M. out of some Mr. Wonderful’s bed, would happen to pop the Tube on” (p.36)
I have a different take: Frenesi = Binah 3 just out of bed from uniting with Mr. Wonderful ( two becomes one - get it?); "pop" means suddenly come into existence in Pynchon's lexicon – one of Gold's fundamental and well-known exercises = the Popcorn exercise based on the alchemy that transforms a kernal into popcorn. "pop the Tube on." Tube = to be as in to be or not to be. "On" = a fundamental formula by Crowley concerning the union of male and female energies. Very appropriate that, coincidentally, this comes on page 36.
“I cannot help but wonder if Pynchon saw the 1987 movie while writing Vineland…”
We actually find more parallels between Vineland and Harry and the Hendersons. This particular Bigfoot flick was an Amblin Entertainment production, Spielberg’s own company. So we can take Hector Zuniga’s word literally when he states on p.52 “why, I’m lookin’ at Steven Spielberg, here.”
Moreover, in the film Harry (the Bigfoot), after being introduced to civilization, quickly becomes kind of a Tubefreak himself. We see him watching TV in no less than three scenes, and he seems to rather enjoy the Addams Family and Bedtime for Bonzo (1951).
RAW once called Bedtime for Bonzo “a rather dull movie”, but I beg to disagree. First of all, it has Ronald Reagan co-starring with a chimpanzee. As Reagan, a behaviorist, attempts to teach the chimp how to fit in human society (starting with good table manners), one might in retrospect interpret his dialogues cynically in light of the way he conducted his politics as a president 30 years later (“I’m going to teach this monkey the difference between right and wrong”).
The intention to make Bonzo a normal family member is indeed then mirrored in Harry and the Hendersons, a family-friendly film that’s also family-themed. Again, one might get struck at the irony of having Reagan in this role, seeing how he later famously went about the “family values.” In fact, Vineland addresses this on p.30-31: “we know already how much all you Reaganite folks care about the family unit, just from how much you’re always in fuckin’ around with it.”
And of course, the Addams Family also had Values (see the 1993 film) as well as an odd family member in the Thing.
The Pynchon book seems to concern itself in part with this theme of the family, albeit a dysfunctional one since Frenesi isn’t with Zoyd and Prairie any longer.
By the way, Bedtime for Bonzo also finds a good old ‘23’ popping up, and there’s even a character who jokingly asks: “Are you sure he wasn't a rabbit about 6 feet tall?”
But perhaps I’m just watching too many movies and need a good Tubaldetox…
“Mostly just sat starin’ at the Tube in the bar. Some movie on channel 86. He was talkin’ to the screen after a while, but I don’t think he was loaded or nothin’.” (p.41)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gItjJyB5DRk
In the Bonzo film we see the two words “big step” together, which I take as a semantic near-sighting. Kinda like those photographs that are simply too blurry for you to actually discern much, but in your heart you know it’s him.
Reagan, ever the rationalist, reasons: "There is one way we might get him to do it. Bananas."
Which brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Baba Havabananda, thus gracing us with instant dharma and a “dazzling revelation in scarlet and gold.”
"A Fortnite & One Battle After Another Collab Just Got Announced?"
https://thephrasemaker.com/2025/07/24/a-fortnite-one-battle-after-another-collab-just-got-announced/
"Rise and shine, Paul Thomas Anderson and Pynchon just got added to Fortnite."
"In a move no one expected, Warner Bros. has decided to bet big on film auteur Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming blockbuster One Battle After Another with a Fortnite crossover."
So a version of Zoyd Wheeler, embodied by Leonardo DiCaprio, and named Bob Ferguson, is going to be a playable character in a very popular video game for teenagers (!?!) Tubal invasion :)))
Rarebit Fiend, I find a number of things in Vineland relevant to current times. In this week's chapter we hear Baba Havabananda interject(p. 52) with a warning to either Zoyd or Hector about a career in law enforcement "in the service of the ever-dwindling attention span of an ever more infantilized population." And that was before the internet decreased the average social media user's attention span even more.
Spookah, good catch with Havvah-ban-Annah from Finnegans Wake and Baba Havabananda from Vineland. The joke from both appears a play on "have a banana." This connects with Pynchon's banana episode near the beginning of Gravity's Rainbow. This joke also puns with the Mother theme of both novels. "Havvah" = the Hebrew name for Eve. This became "Hava" in the common Latin version of the Bible. "Ban" appears a mashup of the Hebrew words for son = ben and daughter = bat. "Annah" refers to Anna Livia Plurabelle, but also to St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. So this name and joke provides an exquisite and humorous blending of male and female energies. The name obviously appears very feminine, but the joke, "have a banana" suggests that "she" get a phallic object. In Pynchon's version, he throws in an extra letter "d" into banana. D = Daleth = the path that connects Mom and Dad. The prefix "Baba"(= baby) connects to the same passage in FW a couple of lines later to a song called The Secret of Her Birth.
Frenesi’s last name is ‘Gates’, which like Daleth means a door.
‘Baba’ is usually translated as meaning ‘father’, so I take Baba Havabananda as the male counterpart of all the female energies contained in Joyce’s Havvah-ban-Annah.
Ananda also means ‘bliss’, which can relate to the union of the Mother/Binah and the Father/Chokmah.
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