By OZ FRITZ
Special guest blogger
"'Most people are depressed, dumb, and agitated most of the time,' states Wilson, 'because they lack the tools to repair and correct damaged defective circuits in their nervous system.' The damaged circuits result in 'downer programs' that keep people stuck in stupid loops of behavior. These stupid downer programs are coping mechanisms to deal with their pain." - Chapel Perilous by Gabriel Kennedy, p. 149.
Fascism commonly describes a particular totalitarian kind of political behavior. It doesn't seem hyperbolic to say that the politics of the United States indicates a major resurgence of State fascism. I will briefly look at fascism on the individual and personal level - the internal fascism that keeps us hooked on downer programs that impede and keep us from living an authentic life true to our own nature. Deleuze and Guattari call this micro-fascism. In Anti-Oedipus they look at the question Wilhelm Reich asked: why do people desire their own repression and self-destruction?
Nietzsche maintained that most people go through life automatically reacting to whatever is currently stimulating. We all have to do that to some extent, but many people seemingly never truly act from within, they react to the outside environment. He uses the French word ressentiment to describe the downer programs that afflict people. This translates as resentment in English but has further negative connotations in the French, I am told. These downer programs create a slave mentality in the general population. Reich refers to this malaise as the emotional plague.
I bring up the subject of micro-fascism in relation to Vineland for two reasons. The first goes back to the Fascist Toejam cassette that the Vomitones play as they drive off into the future (p. 55). Earlier I brought up "toejam" as a reference to a lyric in "Come Together" by The Beatles. When researching how they wrote it, I discovered a lyric previously unknown to me. The song starts with an "sht" sound that becomes a rhythmic element. I though it simply a sound, but it seems a part of the lyric "shoot me". The "me" being mostly inaudible unless you know it's there. – I heard or imagined I heard it. A tragic irony played out only 11 or so years later when John Lennon, the song's singer and primary composer, was gunned down outside his home in New York. I can't think of anything more fascist than murdering someone. Describing the volume of the cassette, Pynchon calls it "300 watts of sonic apocalypse;" this obvious exaggeration allows him to use that number. 300 connects with the Death card in the tarot.
The second reason has to do with Deleuze and Guattari getting a shout-out in this chapter (p. 97):
"fortunately Ralph Wayvone's library happened to include a copy of the indispensable Italian Wedding Fake Book, by Deleuze and Guattari, which Gelsomina, the bride, to protect her wedding from such possibly unlucky omens as blood on the cake, had the presence of mind to slip indoors and bring back out to Billy Barf's attention." She did this to prevent Wayvone's goons from beating up the band for not knowing enough traditional Italian songs. The Deleuze & Guattari wedding fake book sidesteps the distinctly fascist tendency to inflict violence on someone who doesn't do what the authority wants them to do.
A Fake book in music is generally a large songbook filled with sheet music of various popular songs and standards. It's designed so that if a musician or a band doesn't know a requested song, they can "fake" it by reading the music. We encountered a ukelele fake book in an earlier chapter when Zoyd worked as a lounge musician in the sky. Both those fake books seem jokes as they don't make them with that kind of specificity. Wedding and love fake books exist, but not those specifically for Italian weddings. Making it a Deleuze and Guattari fake book compounds the humor since they're both French. An ukelele fake book sounds even more ridiculous.
Diverging along the ukelele tangent: that choice of instrument reminded me of George Harrison who had a reputation for being very fond of them. Paul McCartney recounts that story during the Concert for George memorial when he introduces "Something" which he starts playing with a uke. It also reminded me of a hilarious Pynchon anecdote. Laurie Anderson wrote a letter to Pynchon saying she wanted to write an opera based on Gravity's Rainbow. To her surprised delight Pynchon replied expressing admiration for her music and granting permission to write the opera. But with one stipulation: the whole opera had to be performed on a single instrument, the banjo. Anderson writes in her autobiography that she interpreted this as a polite and charming way of saying no. She did write one song inspired by the novel, "Gravity's Angel" (1984).
At the time of writing Vineland Deleuze and Guattari had published both volumes of their Capitalism and Schizophrenia series. Volume I is called Anti-Oedipus, Volume II is A Thousand Plateaus. In the preface to the former Michel Foucault calls it an "introduction to the non-fascist life." Desire is a primary focal point in Anti-Oedipus. They see it as a productive force that influences individual reality. This force, however, can go in the direction of repressive and self-destructive tendencies. A desire for fascism can manifest taking the form of a need for order, control, certainty and the suppression of diversity (no more DEI, dammit!). Or it can manifest in the opposite direction if one desires the freedom to be true to oneself. Foucault writes: "I think Anti-Oedipus can best be read as an 'art,' in the sense that is conveyed by the term 'erotic art,' for example. . . . "
"This art of living counter to all forms of fascism, whether already present or pending, carries with it a certain number of essential principles which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide to everyday life." Foucault then gives his essential principles. He ends the preface bringing up the "games and snares scattered throughout the book." His final description also seems to apply to Vineland or even Gravity's Rainbow:
"The traps of Anti-Oedipus are those of humor: so many invitations to let oneself be put out, to take one's leave of the text and slam the door shut. The book often leads one to believe that it's all fun and games, when something essential is taking place, something of extreme seriousness: the tracking down of all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives."
The ending phrase of this quote is what Robert Anton Wilson calls "downer programs." His solution: increase intelligence. It seems to me impossible to read and comprehend Thomas Pynchon without increasing intelligence. Even if reading Vineland for the first time just taking in the story. Anyone know enough Italian to know the meaning of "ventunesmo?" The non-Italian speaking reader has the choice of increasing their intelligence slightly by looking the word up or skipping over it and remaining in ignorance about that passage. Another possibility: infer what the word means by the context it appears in. This also increases intelligence.
Some commentators are on record saying the wedding song book refers to Anti-Oedipus which makes sense given the anti-fascist theme. Jeeshan Gazi, disagrees. He contends that the D&G mention refers to their second main work, A Thousand Plateaus and has an article in Orbit: A Journal of American Literature called "On Delueze and Guattari's Italian Wedding Fake Book: Pynchon, Improvisation, Social Organization and Assemblage." His rationale holding that their book of music charts better suits A Thousand Plateaus which addresses music in various ways. He also claims that Pynchon has shared D&G's philosophy for a long time and gives an early short story, "Entropy" from Slow Learner as an example." It's a very readable article that also delves into Mason & Dixon a little and also compares free jazz to their philosophy in connection with the fake songbook. It can be perused online or downloaded for free here: https://orbit.openlibhums.org/
This chapter introduces another main character who remains for the rest of the book, Darryl Louise (DL) Chastain. Her first two names affirms the male/female blending theme. Chastain is a French name meaning chestnut. She and Frenesi were close once. When DL discovers Prairie's heritage, Frenesi again becomes present in her absence. DL and Prairie connect through the Adjustments business card Zoyd gave Prairie given to him years ago by Takeshi. DL and Takeshi are partners. Language around that supports Spookah's previous comment connecting it with the Thoth Tarot Adjustment. He's also proven correct that the card has something to do with Frenesi.
The wedding takes place in the gated community of Lugares Altos which translates as High Places. The location's description puts it in the hills of Los Altos, California. I googled Lugares Altos attempting to find out if it's a real place and it came up with Pies de Ciervas en Lugares which is the Spanish translation of a Christian classic written in 1955 by Hannah Hurnard, Hinds' Feet in High Places. We find enough overlaps with this in our story that I consider it a definite maybe that Pynchon intended the allusion. Hurnard's title, like Isaiah Two Four's name, comes from a Bible quote: "The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places." (Habakkuk 3:19) A hind is a female deer (a male deer is called a hart). Chastain sounds close to Christian. Hinds' Feet in High Places has been compared to The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan, another allegorical Christian classic. I recommend reading the latter. I haven't read the former.
Lugares Altos = LA = 31 = "The highest feminine trinity" (The Meaning of the Primes from 777). The feminine trinity in this chapter could be Prairie, DL, and Frenesi or Prairie, DL, and Gelsomina (the bride) if looking at those physically present. The Vomitones learned some Italian songs based on the theme of transcendence. One of them is "Al Di La" (p.96). Crowley makes a big deal of Al (= God) and La (= Not) when examining the word "Lashtal" (La+sht+al) in his notes for the ritual Liber V Vel Reguli. The Italian song has "Di" in the middle instead suggesting Daleth = Venus = love. Daleth also represents the path connecting Mom (Binah) and Dad (Chokmah) most apropos for a wedding. Veering back to the ukelele scene high in the sky, the song "Do You Believe in Magic" is brought up. I forgot to comment earlier that this became a hit song for The Lovin' Spoonful.
Chapter 7 ends with a form of transcendence I first got from listening to John Cage's 4'33" where every sound gets heard as music. Robert Anton Wilson sometimes played a version of this in his workshops or talks where he'd get the audience to close their eyes for about 5 minutes and listen without identifying the sounds.
Next week: please read chapter 8, pages 107 - 129
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