By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
Deep breath. Most of what I remember and most of what I love about this novel happens in the first half of the book. Perhaps I will understand and appreciate the balance of the novel reading it in 2025, Thanatoids and all. I did enjoy the bit about Rolls Royces in chapter nine.
The discussion of faces on film on page 195 makes me think of two things. First, I think of the character on Fear the Walking Dead who recorded interviews with people about their experiences during the zombie apocalypse. Second, I think about the documentary Hôtel Terminus. The surviving members of the French Resistance in that film seem full of life, whereas the collaborationists and Nazis seemed, as Pynchon says, “evasive, affectless, cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of what they would never get to collect on?”
Pg. 197, xanthorcroid means, “of, relating to, or designating races having light-coloured hair and a pale complexion” according to Collins Dictionary. That fits with the reference to the sisters’ attitude towards the surfing community in this passage.
3 comments:
This has been my fav chapter so far. I felt especially dialed into Pynchon's world building and over arching narrative here.
The line "because too many of us are learning how to pay attention" rang uniquely true as I found myself experiencing deeper immersion in the novel.
The whole "death to everything that oinks" bit, ending with the "oh yeah? What's your sign, man?" exchange got a genuine lol out of me :)))
Just finished chapter 11 a few minutes ago, whew!
There's this great new Martian Manhunter comic that everyone is, correctly, going crazy over, that turns out to be an intentional Pynchon "psychedelic noir" riff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_Martian_Manhunter
The Pynchon wave is everywhere you want to be!
Vineland does seem to get a bit more convoluted from here on in. But I also really enjoyed this chapter. It starts with a nearly invisible Trans Am. This is the second instance of invisibility not by overtly defying the laws of physics by dodging light to become unnoticeable. The first instance came a couple of chapters ago with the Head Ninjette. It makes me think in a broader sense that this may apply to Vineland as a whole – some of it appears not easily visible.
The editing scenario on p. 197 closely resembles William Burroughs' magick experiments with tape recorders as he outlined in The Electronic Revolution.
Except for Howie, most of the members of the 24fps film collective are women. Their relatively peaceful anarchism recalls the anarchism RAW got into.
p. 198 Krishna gets a reputation for broad ESP skills. The type of ESP mentioned seems the same kind that musicians enjoy when improvising together.
p. 199 possibly a prognosis ( or a coincidence of phrase) with the fascism happening today: "Troopers evicted members of a commune in Texas, beating the boys with slapjacks, grabbing handcuffed girls by the pussy ..."
p. 199 The following paragraph that starts "At some point Prairie understood..." describes a method of being to being contact through film. This seems possible, to me. It appears a form of magick that works through the bardo: "Prairie floated, ghostly light of head, as if Frenesi were dead but in a special way, a minimum security arrangement, where limited visits, mediated by a projector and screen, were possible." I suggest that a similar kind of contact, given the right circumstances, can occur between an author and a reader.
The mention on p. 194 of “a muumuu with parrots all over it” refers to a type of Hawaiian dress, but of course reminded me of the Justified and Ancients, especially since it pops up three pages after the mock song that goes “kick out the jambs, motherfucker.”
“Oh yeah? What’s your sign, man?”
“Virgo.”
“It figures.”
I appreciate the sync, as we are right now in this first week of September under the sign of Virgo indeed.
‘Ditzah’, although a Jewish name, seems to me reminiscent of Soviet filmmaker and film theorist Dziga Vertov, as well as the early 70s Marxist experimental Dziga Vertov Group, of which Godard was a member. (One of their film, Vladimir and Rosa, deals in part with the trial of the ‘Chicago Eight’, a legal proceeding following from the ‘68 Democratic Convention protests that both Shea and Wilson witnessed and which informed their political views for the rest of their lives.)
I suggest that, after the countless references to the Tube, its omnipresence and soothing power, the introduction of a guerrilla film collective is no coincidence. The Tube can be seen as an insidious instrument of propaganda that 24fps aims to counteract through similar means. Turning back onto the government and its agents in order to expose (to use a photographic term) its fascistic tendencies, because “who could withstand the light?” (p. 195)
“Everybody in 24fps had their own ideas about light, and about all they shared was the obsession.” (p. 201)
Shedding light on “the fascist monster, Central Power itself” appears a way, or so they hope, to get the people to become more aware and less easily manipulated. Literally to render things clearer, or to speak in psychoanalytical terms, to make the unconscious conscious (one aim of magick). Only this would be the collective rather than personal unconscious, or perhaps the mass psychology.
Interestingly, it seems that it is while dreaming that Frenesi enjoys the best clarity of mind as to the rampant fascism in society, while when awake, “the creature had not after all been banished, only become, for a while, less visible.” (p. 202) And even a Jungian concept is tangentially evoked in the assertion that “you don’t die for no motherfuckin’ shadows.”
I note as well that, after her time with 24fps, DL went on to live with the Ninjettes, probably learning how to use the shadows to her advantage and become invisible.
This all ties in with my remarks from some weeks ago on the difference between the Tube beaming pictures into the viewer’s eyes and a projector allowing the audience to look at the projection itself, thus making cinema intrinsically more empowering than the Tube.
I would also recommend reading Michael Johnson’s recent post on film editing and perception.
Post a Comment