Vaslav Nijinsky in his rose costume for 'La Spectre de la Rose'
This week: Chapter 2, pg. 14-21
By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
Attitudes towards mental health have changed since 1984. The phrase “laughing-academy outpatient” (pg. 14) probably would not occur on the news in 2025. The discussion of the personality which prefers jumping out of windows reminds me of Nijinsky’s leap out the window at the end of the ballet La Spectre de la Rose choreographed by Fokine. Bob Wilson discusses this leap in Prometheus Rising. That ballet portrays another dream narrative, when a young lady (about Prairie’s age) comes home from her first dance with her first rose, and she dreams of dancing with the rose.
Isaiah Two Four’s idea about a gun themed amusement park seems to presage the rise of Republican ad’s featuring politicians firing guns and Christmas cards featuring their armed families.
I like the way Pynchon creates fictitious movies in the novel, as well as the way he gives the dates for real movies.
14 comments:
Continuing to very much enjoy my sojourns in Vineland!
My stream o'consciousness prose styling is like milk in a refrigerator, taking on the flavors of whatever is in its shared space, and mirroring Pynchon's time-binded neurons is quite pleasant :)))
This is an observation from beyond just this week's pages, but I'm getting the vibe of channel surfing as I read through Vineland. The styles, rules, and tones are allowed to shift at will. From slice of life realism, to slapstick comedy, to surrealist action-adventure, Pynchon has created a pretext where the story can safely travel into any territory.
Also, I know it's only a loose adaptation, but the trailer for "One Battle After Another" is pretty exciting! They're marketing it as more of a straight up action movie than I expect it actually probably is.
Very elegant post with the Nijinsky leap and ballet story. It makes me wonder if Pynchon deliberately referenced this; it certainly fits. "Laughing academy outpatient" I took as pain management advice.
Bobby, your comment on the channel surfing vibe reminds me of Joyce's different narrative styles in Ulysses. Joyce appears a big influence on Pynchon. Looking at a screen seems a frequent reference and/or activity in Vineland written just a few years before the internet took off.
Isaiah Two Four's business idea of a violence themed amusement park appears an example of what I've called Pynchon's chiaroscuro technique of blending light and darkness. The Bible quote his parents named him after talks about ending violence in favor of peace. I recall a similar riff in Rafi Zabor's Street Legal but couldn't find it there so it could have been a hallucinatory memory.
The orange snack Cheetos comes in three times in this chapter. For some reason Pynchon chooses to hyphenate it all three times as no one else does. One of those times is a line break, a natural explanation, but the other two are not. He writes "Chee-tos" and "Chee-to". An obvious Cabala reference (not Gematria) looks clear directly related to the channel 86 symbolism Spookah brought up last week. Any guesses? Zoyd watches himself on channel 86 with Prairie as they share a bag of Chee-tos.
Not meant to deter new readers to the TP tome, super appreciative of all of the comments here, just another point of reference for those happy hunters and rabbit-hole types. Pynchon, like JOYce, is likely best enjoyed with your own reference points - at least on the first reading or couple few readings. You can let the warm waterfall of names, places, setting, humour, and words wash over you before searching for the source. Like any memorable art, you can see, feel, and experience it from a myriad of different perspectives, remember to enjoy the trip.
https://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Excellent book, excellent comments!!
The full name of the band being Art Zoyd suggests to me yet another connection between the character Zoyd and the tarot Trump XIV Art, with its androgynous figure (“in this card is foreshadowed the final stage of the Great Work”). This card also corresponds to Sagittarius, the Archer. “The Arrow is, in fact, the simplest and purest glyph of Mercury, being the symbol of directed Will.”
The 1959 film Gidget is mentioned, so I decided to “lit a joint and settle in front of the Tube” (p. 21), as it was new to me. Very much a time-capsule, it also happens to be a summer flick, which I found fitting both in regard to Vineland and to our current location in time. ‘Gidget’ spawned several sequels, making the whole series a total of six films. The last one, Gidget’s Summer Reunion, was made-for-the-Tube and came out in 1985, one year after the fictional events recounted in Vineland. I found Gidget, a 16 years-old girl trying to lose her virginity, to be about the only likeable character in the film, her lovely, youthful and forward-going feminine energy constantly being mocked and thwarted by douchy males. The only actually supportive character appears to be her mother, another female.
Gidget could be a late-Fifties version of Prairie.
The name of the Moondoggie character Pynchon refers to reminds me of the musician Moondog, who had a track called ‘Witch of Endor’. The Return of the Jedi shooting that happened in the Vineland area (Humboldt County, just south of Del Norte, mentioned in chapter 1) ended up in the film as the foresty moon called Endor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rCLjLo04AY
In the Gidget film, I also counted at least three instances of “Hot Shot” (it being the name of one of the surfer boys), as in “TV 86 Hot Shot News” (p. 15). A direct transmission from Kether might certainly feel like hot shot news, but the Path of Sagittarius from Yesod (like Endor, the Moon) to Tiphareth also looks like the Archer’s Hot Shot to me:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fb/c0/d4/fbc0d4529b8ff07c84f25c7547939dfc.jpg
In fact, we observe a straight line on the Tree of Life from Kether to Yesod, with the Holy Guardian Angel in Tiphareth acting as middle-man (some astral version of the “news anchor” Skip Tromblay, maybe?)
Keeping the Tree of Life in mind might be advisable for this book set in trees country (p. 5 saw Zoyd talking of not being into spending “all day narrowly escaping death by tree” as an excuse for his lack of interest in working).
The Six Rivers National Forest covers part of Humboldt and Del Norte counties, and I noticed that one of the rivers is called Mad River, reminding me of our “laughing academy outpatient” Zoyd. The river ends just north of the town of Arcata, which pops up together with Eureka (like the light-bulb moment) on page 6. Another nearby town in Humboldt County is called Fortuna, again recalling Wheeler.
Mad River was also the name of a 60’s acid rock band originally from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Bob Wilson lived in the early Sixties. The photograph of RAW on the Chapel Perilous biography itself appears “courtesy of Antiochiana, Antioch College.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QlcqXg4bwc
Although “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah Two Four), unfortunately “the war goes on” indeed.
Many thanks for the link to the Pynchon wiki!
Very interesting comment, Spookah. I love Moondog's music. E.J. Gold recommends listening to it. He knew him when he was a street character in New York wearing his Viking helmet and playing and selling his music.
Thanks for watching Gidget and reporting back. Pynchon shows his brilliance by bringing this film and others into the story so that it becomes like hypertext; hypervision? I agree with both your interpretations of Hot Shot. Also "Hot Shot News" = 115 = "to make strong, vehement, eager." This fits both your interpretations as does the phrase "Here am I", another correspondence with 115.
“TV 86 Hot Shot News” shows a qabalistic image or instruction:
Tell a vision – 86 (Kether in Malkuth) Hot Shot News.
Chee-tos or Chee-to. From the Chinese: Chi = the vital life force. I connect Chi with Kether. tos or to = toes or toe = Malkuth on the Tree of Life. Another blending of Kether and Malkuth this time in a delicious snack. One of these variations appears 3 times in the chapter thus corresponding with Mom ( Binah).
The sentence (p. 14): "They sat together in front of the Tube, with a chair-high bag of Chee-tos and a sixpack of Grapefruit soda from the health-food store ..." has a very obvious reference to E.J. Gold to anyone familiar with his work. The Grapefruit Talk is a classic recording of his and would have been made in the same era Pynchon worked with him. In the talk, Gold claims that an individual's higher self (he probably uses the term "being" or "essential self") appears the size of a grapefruit when undeveloped.)
Bringing up the Art card again gave me an astonishing synchronicity. The headline of Gold's blog this morning: "Still More about ART" (caps are his) - just like you did talking more about the Art card. Below the headline is a photo of one of his idiosyncratic Tarot decks spread out. This deck features a girl on every card about the age of Gidget or Prairie. The Wheel of Fortune is one of the cards seen. The first sentence of the blog, "Still more about the artwork" adds to 111, the number of Anna Livia Plurabelle.
I'll have more to say about trees in my next post. They appear a strong part of the ambience of the Vineland area. Later on towards the end, Pynchon has the one word sentence "Trees." I'll also return to the subject of telepathy in the future.
Always a pleasure to think out loud with you, Oz!
“A sixpack of Grapefruit soda” not only brings up another 6, but also grapes, thus connecting again with the land of Vines. As previously noted, the Thoth’s Fool starts his journey carrying large grapes.
How about Chee-tos = Cheth – Tau?
Cheth connects to both the Chariot card and the sign of Cancer, and its path on the Tree goes up to Binah. Crowley liked to bring in your old buddy Rabelais and his ‘Gargantua’ in order to explicate the Chariot’s meaning. The Panurge question “should I marry?” could refer both to Zoyd’s blending of male and female when in drag, and to Gidget’s teenage awakening to sexuality. And the answer “TRINC!” is what will likely happen to the sixpack of Grapefruit soda.
Tau, on the other hand, connects to the Universe card, which itself corresponds to the planets Saturn (Binah again) and Earth (arriving at Malkuth, albeit from a different logic than yours). Its path on the Tree is the one going from Malkuth to Yesod, the first step upon ascending, as well as the last stretch of the straight line that starts in Kether, the direct line of transmission for Hot Shot News.
In his book on the Thoth, Lon Milo DuQuette writes: “As Binah’s representative, [Saturn] is the only planetary sphere above the Abyss. In many ways, it is the highest of the high. We also know that because earth is lowest, it ironically plays a pivotal role in the cosmic scheme of things. How strange that the highest high and the lowest low would be represented by the same card.”
About the female figure on the Universe card, Lon asks: “Is she Nuit/Babalon, goddess of the sphere of Saturn, Binah? Or is she the virgin princess of the sphere of earth, Malkuth? She is, in truth, both the great mother and the virgin daughter of eternity.”
This reminds me of the special connection Gidget shares with her mother.
We sometimes speak of ‘the great sea of Binah”. In the film, Gidget, not yet a woman, wants to learn how to surf. In one scene, she even almost drowns, actually due to being bullied by assholes men.
And to close off this comment, a word of wisdom from our sponsor Uncle Al in relation to Universe:
“Treat time and all conditions of Events as Servants of thy Will, appointed to present the Universe to thee in the form of thy Plan.”
Wonderful Spookah! I find your formulations relevant and inspiring. I particularly like the connection between grapes and Vineland.
Big if true! True if big!
"Unconfirmed Rumors saying Pynchon did a pass on the One Battle After Another script."
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThomasPynchon/comments/1lwx1kw/unconfirmed_rumors_saying_pynchon_did_a_pass_on/
Cool! I look forward to seeing One Battle After Another. I enjoyed the preview.
The last "anonymous" comment came from me.
"We sometimes speak of ‘the great sea of Binah”. In the film, Gidget, not yet a woman, wants to learn how to surf. In one scene, she even almost drowns, actually due to being bullied by assholes men."
I should have developed further that this scene, to me, almost reads as a metaphor for the dangers of unbalanced and overpowering male energy, Gidget being the only female, surrounded by several disrespectful and sexually agressive males who (in this scene very literally) continually put her down.
You can still be reminded of the importance of balancing opposite energies by interpreting 'chee-to' as Chi-Tao.
Since surfing plays an important part in the 'Gidget' film, I find it interesting that Bobby Campbell would talk of "channel surfing".
Another common point between Vineland and Ulysses is that both have unnumbered chapters.
I know we planned this reading group as to have its ending to coincide with the release of the new Pynchon book. But did we also know of, and take into account, the release of One Battle After Another?
'One Battle Atfer Another' reminds me of the Mad River song 'The War Goes On.'
There might be a subtle anti-war sentiment to 'Gidget', as the older one of her sexual interests happens to be a Korean-war veteran with commitment issues. Despite being about 10 years older than the other boys around, he does not appear significantly more mature than them on many regards, having no other ambition than living as a beach bum who follows the Endless Summer. I think his character might be an early, and light, cinematic depiction of having PTSD.
Yet another Moon Dawg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWutL1T5fIk
The path of the Universe card on the Tree, surfing its way toward Yesod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYg9yxs_cVc
Spookah wrote:
"You can still be reminded of the importance of balancing opposite energies by interpreting 'chee-to' as Chi-Tao" How so? I regard Chi and Tao as related concepts in Taoism rather than opposites. If you interpret "tos" or "to" as Tao then "chee-tos" = the way of vital force, as I see it. Chi = vital force; Tao = the Way. Otherwise, I love the additional comments about Gidget and the way it reinforces the theme of balancing yin and yang.
Sorry for my unclear formulation, I did not mean to imply that chi and tao are opposites.
I was only pointing out that chi and tao relates to Taoism, which promotes the idea of seemingly opposite forces that really complete and even contain each other, and need to be balanced for things to run smoothly.
Chee-to as chi-tao would simply be an indication for the reader to go look into Chinese cosmology, which sometimes can show interesting overlap with Western occultism (think for instance Western alchemy and its concepts of male and female, similar to yin and yang).
Thus, chee-to can be interpreted in different ways that ultimately points to the same general ideas.
I believe that most of Pynchon's work has an emphasis on odd and extravagant foods at times- yet, the diets of the people of Vineland seem particuarly bizarre and unappetizing. They seem to twist between the kind of processed snack-food consumption that has become endemic in our society to the laughably healthy to the point of being inedible.
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