By OZ FRITZ
Special guest blogger
"The way out is via the door.
Why is it that no one will use this method?" – RAW quoting Confucius as told in Chapel Perilous by Gabriel Kennedy (p.46).
"For Wilson, when people digested language charged with 'meta-dimensional meaning, improbable structure, and even craziness, new circuits were produced within the human nervous system.'" op. cit. (p. 49)
How does one communicate in the Higher Dimensions or the Higher Brain Circuits? Rational and linear language stays close to the C3 territory. It works well with the four primate circuits. Images, allegories, metaphors, puzzles, riddles and koans appear to occasionally tease cognition of higher consciousness. Images get created in various ways. A basic example in Vineland comes when Pynchon compares Hector to Ricardo Montalban, a popular Mexican TV and film actor well known to people of a certain age. He nonverbally creates a recognizable picture of Hector's mannerisms to people who recognize the image of Montalban from his acting. This example won't necessarily spark higher awareness, but it shows the same principle of nonverbal communication through association.
Pynchon seems a master of creating images; a real magician. The more you bring to the game, the more these images open up to you. In this sense, reading a Pynchon work becomes interactive, it requires the reader's active attention and participation to start getting the full effect. There are many ways to go with it, everyone makes their own lexicon of associations to a degree depending upon how deep down the rabbit hole to Wonderland one chooses to go. These images brought to life in the mind of the reader are what I'm calling metalinguistics admittedly a bit of a stretch from the academic definition of the term ("the ability to reflect on and manipulate language, treating it as an object of thought" - Ellen Bialystok). Stefan Mattessich looks at the nature of Pynchon's metalinguistics in Lines of Flight - Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire in the Work of Thomas Pynchon. Discussing The Crying of Lot 49: "Oedipa Maas's search for the meaning of Tristero and of the communication system known as WASTE is never far away from an impoverishment of sense that threatens to collapse the novel into a heap of ambiguous signs. What I attempt to demonstrate in this chapter is that the meaning of the novel lies in its formal incoherence. ... By undermining its own narrative and analogical consistency, the novel dramatizes a social order that subsumes subjects in immaterial nexuses of discourse, communication systems and information. The reader no less than Oedipa is caught in these nexuses and compelled to grasp the truth of the novel in its parodies of the interpretive act itself. The time of the novel englobes us in its metalinguistic immanence, in other words, and demands a performative theorizing to be understood."
Vineland looks a little different in that there seems more coherence in its form though I would say it has its fair share of "immaterial nexuses of discourse" those episodes when the story goes off on a tangent. Vineland doesn't demand theorizing to be understood, it does just fine as a straight up adventure, but we find a wealth of esoteric information by digging deeper.
Nonverbal literary communication through images appears related to Chinese ideograms which Ezra Pound explored in The Cantos. Other thematic parallels can be found between Pound's epic tale of the tribe and Vineland's more localized tale of the tribe. "Wilson regarded The Cantos as 'the most ambitious of all modern poems' presenting history as a perpetual battle between those supporting individual rights and those obsessed with power and control" (Chapel Perilous, p. 17). The dialectic between freedom and fascism becomes an overarching theme in Vineland. The end of chapter 4 briefly illustrates this when someone plays a Fascist Toejam cassette before the Vomitones drive off into the future implying a sense of freedom. The freedom/fascism dialectic appears most concisely in the metalinguistics of Fascist Toejam. The only other instance I know of "toejam" in a cultural artifact appears in the lyrics to "Come Together" by The Beatles, a song inspired by (he donated the chorus) and about Dr. Timothy Leary. It goes like this:
"He wear no shoeshine, he got toejam football
He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola
He say 'I know you, you know me'
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free"
I maintain that these ideograms or nonverbal images, whatever we wish to call them, leads to a form of telepathy, i.e. nonverbal communication. It can also be construed as heightened intuition which we shall see subtle examples of in Vineland.
Chapter 5 sends us on a loop in time, from the present back to Zoyd and Frenesi splitting up then whirling forward back to the present in the final paragraph. The chapter starts and ends with a business card that we find out more about later. Remember that it entered the story in this chapter, 5. We also find a few references to the old version of the show Hawaii Five-0 and a number of film mentions. The song Zoyd and Takeshi play, Wacky Coconuts, reminds me of the Marx Brothers. The Coconuts was their first film and Wacky is the name of Harpo's character in The Big Store.
P. 57 "Feel like Mildred Pierce's husband Bert," – Zoyd references a depression era book called Mildred Pierce, a psychological drama by James M. Cain, according to Wikipedia. Mildred's eldest daughter Veda plays a major part in the story.
P. 60 - 62 has multiple references to death. Zoyd contemplates suicide. Later, he's offered "[a] gig of death. He calls a 24-hour number to get hired. Key #24 corresponds with Death in the tarot. Then, "2:30 A.M." gives a 23, a number frequently associated with death; also a number that indicates the bardo.
The number one holds significance for Pynchon, make of that what you will. Using Joycean word deconstruction we have the Vomitones = Vomit-ones. We've met Ralph Wayvone Jr. = Way-v-one. Later we'll meet his father with the same name. In this chapter, right before Zoyd dies in his suicide fantasy he hears "Jack Lord say, 'Book him, Danno – Suicide One.'" P. 62 has Zoyd reaching for a "dash-one" - military slang for a User's Manual. This chapter ends with the phrase, "as if she were supposed to be the one to have it all along." Coincidentally, the word "once" adds to 133 which corresponds with "vine" in Sepher Sephiroth.
Next week: please read chapter 6, pages 68 - 91
10 comments:
Terrific post. When I read the reference to Mildred Pierce, I thought of the Joan Crawford movie. Oz Fritz in his commentary thought of the James M. Cain book.
I know of at least one reader who stopped reading Vineland when he reached the UFO scene in this chapter. I love that scene. David Foster Wallace didn’t like Vineland very much. I love Vineland more than any other Pynchon novel, and I love all of his novels.
This chapter made me want to learn the ukelele. My wife bought me one a few years ago for which I feel very grateful.
The ‘Hawaii Five-O’ Theme, by surf band The Ventures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pZrxxvB66k
Mildred Pierce is also a 1945 Classic Hollywood melodrama directed by Michael Curtiz (of Casablanca fame) and starring Joan Crawford in the titular role. In one of the first scenes, like Zoyd she contemplates suicide. Her daughter Veda has to be one of the most spoiled brat evil bitch in the history of cinema. Bert isn’t a great guy either, but he fares slightly better than the other male assholes surrounding poor Mildred.
Although I have not seen it, I understand that the 1966 film Hawaii (referenced on p. 62) is also supposed to fall into the melodrama category. Melodramas (like soap operas) typically have almost comically tragic turn of events, dealt with by the characters in overblown emotions, often acted in a campy way. This type of cinematic winks might have something to do with Zoyd’s awareness of the pathos of his post-breakup emotional state. It also speaks of the tendency to interpret one’s own feelings and experiences through the filter of whatever examples we got by watching the Tube.
RAW once brought up the film Hawaii as well, in Ishtar Rising, if for an altogether different reason:
“And yet there were nipples, real lives nipples on the screen, and I knew that an era had ended. […] Until those nipples appeared in Hawaii, I thought I would never see an American movie that wasn’t an implicitly Roman Catholic movie.” (p. 161 of the Hilaritas edition)
“copping rays down on the beach at Waikiki” (p. 56):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCYcufGI0Sk
Rock lyrics are notoriously easy to mishear, but I always thought the "Come Together" lyrics referred to "Trojan football," the most prominent college football team in California, and not to "toejam football."
I wanted to also mention that if people are worried about a Pynchon novel being difficult, this book has been a pretty easy read so far. Not too late to join us!
The business card given to Zoyd reads “Adjustments.” This to me suggests the Thoth Trump VIII Adjustment which, “in the old pack was called Justice.” It “represents the sign of Libra, ruled by Venus; in it Saturn is exalted. […] In the greatest symbolism of all, however, this card is the feminine complement of the Fool.”
Crowley goes on to explain that, in French, this card’s name “should rather be Justesse” (meaning exactitude), because “Nature is not just, but exact. […] It is impossible to drop a pin without exciting a corresponding reaction in every Star.”
Further, the card symbolizes the “final adjustment”, “when the daughter, redeemed by her marriage with the Son, is thereby set up on the throne of the mother.”
Coincidentally, Crowley begins discussing this card on p. 86 of the Book of Thoth, like the TV channel.
The card seems to me to connect with Frenesi. Zoyd can certainly be seen as the Fool, and “the throne of the mother” on the Tree of Life means Binah, which indeed is home to Saturn. Binah and its Great Sea have already been hinted at many times previously in Vineland.
However, I find it interesting to note that we see in the book more than one mother-daughter combination, due to the three generations represented by Sasha, Frenesi and Prairie.
“In material matters, may refer to law suits or prosecutions. Socially, marriage or marriage agreements.”
Frenesi and Zoyd are, in this flashback, going through a break-up leading to a divorce. But the symbolism of the Thoth card also speaks of a marriage at a higher level:
“Balance against each thought its exact opposite.
For the Marriage of these is the Annihilation of Illusion.”
The colors corresponding to the Adjustment card are: “Emerald Green; Blue; Deep Blue-Green; Pale Green.”
And indeed we find that the Hawaiian shores have “tiny glowing aqua pools set in tropical groves of deep green.” (p. 57)
Perhaps even more to the point is Sasha pondering if “maybe this was [Zoyd’s] maiden voyage into the green seas of jealousy.” (p. 58)
And in yet one more intertextual echo, the film Gidget Goes Hawaiian opens with Gidget breaking up with her boyfriend and flying to Hawaii (the plane scenes being set to a cheesy muzak reminiscent of Zoyd’s own “lounge-piano” gig at Kahuna Airlines), thus initiating a “maiden voyage into the green seas of jealousy” for several characters.
I consider the tarot to be a media for “nonverbal communication through images”, and the same goes for the songs and films referenced in Vineland. I find it rewarding to enhance my reading of the book by checking out these cultural items and putting them in perspective with Pynchon’s themes.
“He played four bars of “Do You Believe in Magic?” and squinted up at her, eyes mostly lingering on the synthetic skirt, ‘Will I see them, Gretchen?’” (p. 64)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnbfuAcCqpY
Excellent write up, Oz. I'll keep my eyes open for more ones and nonverbal communication.
And great explication of the Adjustment card, Spookah.
The "not exactly" a UFO reminded me of the recent UAP sightings disclosed by the military. The scene was sufficiently bizarre and sinister that I am dying to know the explanation. I wonder if the reader is given one.
With Mildred Pierce being mentioned as a melodrama, I thought I'd bring up Twin Peaks, which was partially so successful in crafting its incredibly unique tone because of the borrowed elements from soap operas.
Thank-you, everyone. I hadn't heard of Mildred Pierce before. I googled her because the name "pierce" shows up in FW immediately after the "have a banana" joke. Google only brought up the book, but I thought there must be a film of it. I discovered that Mildred Pierce now exists as a mini series starring Kate Winslet.
Tom, I've always heard that lyric as "toejam football" and that's how it's listed in the lyrics I've seen. In the All the Songs Beatles edition: "[Lennon] said he wrote most of the lyrics in the studio with the help of other group members, including George, who confirmed that he had suggested a few words – words he called 'gibberish,' totally removed from Leary's original message, but reflecting Lennon's taste for nonsense."
Pynchon doesn't appear to be afraid of leaving loose ends with his plot digressions.
“’Uh-huh!’ the strange ukulelist replied. ‘But it’d be easier – in the key of G!’” (p. 65)
Now, I do not know anything about music theory, but I noticed something interesting. If we take this G as the Hebrew letter Gimel, we find a correspondence with the High Priestess of the Tarot. She represents the Moon, many times hinted at up to this point in Vineland, and she indeed has a string instrument upon her lap. Her path crosses the Abyss, which can be fitting as the Kahuna Airlines plane is flying over a large stretch of ocean, and our mysterious ukulele player appears in a bit of a (toe)jam himself, trying to hide from those masked people coming from a UFO-like vehicle.
“Further, Zoyd noticed that every time he hit his highest B flat, the invaders would grab for their radio headsets, as if unable to hear or understand the signal.” (p. 66)
By the same logic, B leads to the letter Beth, corresponding to the Magus. His path is fittingly one of the “highest” on the Tree of Life, and since in playing this note, Zoyd manages to get those shadowy invaders to “withdraw in a blank perplexity”, I find it fair to assess that magick has happened. (But, do you believe in magic?)
The Magus is in a way the male counterpart of the High Priestess, both have paths leading directly to Kether, the highest sphere, and the Magus goes from Binah. Maybe references to such high levels of the Tree of Life shows up because our characters are situated “about 37,000 feet above the middle of the ocean” (p. 64).
They’re also said to be “above the tropic of Cancer,” which, on the other side of the Americas, would be the Bermuda Triangle where many ships are supposed to have mysteriously disappeared. I wonder if Pynchon is here aping this sorta UFO-related trope.
Talking of apes (I will spare you Bigfoot references), the Thoth deck gives the Magus a Bonzo-like companion in “the Cynolcephalus, the Ape of Thoth. This creature is the personification of an ironic curse that afflicts Thoth-Mercury. Because falsehood and misunderstanding are inherent in all speech and writing, it is the cosmic duty of the Ape of Thoth to constantly mock the work of the Magus and distort his words. As Crowley points out, ‘Manifestation implies illusion.”
I find that this connects with what Oz talks about in his first few paragraphs.
Perhaps Pynchon himself is being both Magus and Ape, having actual occult transmissions deliberately (toe)jammed by his comic-book-on-acid ironic style of writing.
The part of the quote in the OP where it mentions Pynchon parodying interpretation could connect with the Ape of Thoth symbolism.
Oz, yes I know you are correct, I was just explaining that I misheard it!
I find myself reading and enjoying Vineland as a breezy summer beach read, all glittering surface, but it sure is nice to have these deep diving higher intelligence reports to go along with it!
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