'One Battle After Another' wins six Oscars

 Paul Thomas Anderson (Creative Commons photo, source.)

I didn't watch the Oscars last night; I was busy watching the U.S. national team defeat the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic. However, I can still report that One Battle After Another, based on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, won six awards, including best picture and best director.  Of course, we had an online discussion group about the novel at this blog, and you can still access it on the right side of this page. 

'One Battle After Another' locations

 

La Purísima Mission State Historic Park near Lompoc. 

A New York Times photo feature shows the locations over much of California where the new movie, One Battle After Another, loosely based on Vineland, was filmed. The article features photos of California from one end of the state to another.  (While I can provide a gift link to the article, I am wary of violating the Times' copyrights, so I have instead taken the above photo from the website for a state park). The Times says the movie "hidden corners of the state that even natives seldom see."

Hat tip, Jesse Walker. 

'Vineland' Addendum: More on Pynchon from Oz Fritz

 

Baruch Spinoza. Created by Barend Graat. Public domain image. 

'Vineland' Addendum

By OZ FRITZ

Special guest blogger

The world moves on a woman's hips

The world moves and it swivels and bops

The world moves on a woman's hips

The world moves and it bounces and hops

– Talking Heads, "The Great Curve" from Remain in Light.

Like many Thomas Pynchon enthusiasts I dived in to Shadow Ticket within days of its release. I strongly suspect Uncle Pinky knew the attention fader would be brought up on Vineland due to the massive publicity halo around One Battle After Another so timed the publication of his latest to shortly follow the cinematic release. Shadow Ticket appears to make sly references back to Vineland like introducing the reader to the Hungarian word for grass: fű which they smoke. Readers of Against The Day with a good memory will recognize Lew Basnight. 

Themes, characters, modalities and connections traverse across the Pynchon universe; Basnight makes a great example. Shadow Ticket follows the adventures and misadventures of Hicks McTaggart on what seems to him a dubious mission as a private investigator. Lew Basnight is also a P.I. in Against the Day in the employ of White City Investigations. Basnight becomes Hicks' mentor in Shadow Ticket. The timeline between the two novels even fits. Against the Day ends around 1919 with the events in Shadow Ticket occurring in 1932 and the occasional look back at the 1920s for context.

Arc/arch imagery provides another clear example of cross textual referencing. Pynchon's most famous book, Gravity's Rainbow, begins with the arc of a V2 rocket in WWII England, heard but not seen. Several scholarly interpretations say this refers to the novel's title since a rainbow appears in the form of an arc across the sky. The fourth paragraph of GR shows people evacuating: ". . . they go in under archways, secret entrances of rotted concrete that only look like loops of an underpass . . ." These "secret entrances of rotted concrete" appears either a direct reference or a coincidental parallel with something from Autobiography of a Sufi by E. J. Gold, but I digress. Mason & Dixon, Pynchon's next big epic after GR opens with the phrase: "Snow-balls have flown their Arcs...". In Vineland  Hubbel Gates receives word of the birth of his granddaughter Prairie "just as he was cracking apart the first white-flame carbons of the evening into sky-drilling beams of pure arc light" (p. 287). Shadow Ticket has a moment when Hicks lights a cigarette for Daphne, the female cheez heiress he's been hired to bring back home: " . . . bending in toward him carefully, an intimate of flame at many levels from candles to arc lamps . . ." Later, we come across "... thickets of electric arc beams crossing from every roof, prismatic, cylindrical, masses of shadow, flanges of vane and light."

I commented on an arc theme in the discussion group for RAW's The Widow's Son [available here on the right side of the page -- scroll down -- Tom]. I derived that one from the mysterious Latin phrase, Et in Arcadia Ego (And in Arcadia I) that recurs in the plot. In one instance it appears at the end of a list connected to Freemasonry just below La Fils de la Veuve which translates from Latin to "The Widow's Son." Wilson writes: "The last part (of the list), then, was in code. That would not be put into writing at any time, but only communicated viva voce (lively voice)." We've already discussed Pynchon's propensity for using the letter V which continues unabated in Shadow Ticket. I suspect Wilson's use of the three letter Vs in Latin right before and after Arcadia (Veuve, viva voce) signals an arc across the bow from Uncle Bob to Uncle Pinky. 

* * * * * * 

The philosophical influence of Baruch Spinoza permeates the written output of Pynchon, Wilson and James Joyce, the latter also influencing profoundly the two former. Spinoza seems one of the first philosophers of the modern era to take a scientific approach to the presentation of his thought. He imitates the form of Euclid's classic work on geometry, Elements in his signature work, Ethics. Both Tom and Bob incorporate much Science into their fiction, sometimes rather obscurely. Spinoza famously came up with the concept "Deus sive Natura" in which he postulated an impersonal God that finds expression in Nature. For this new perspective on divinity he was deemed an atheist and excommunicated from the Jewish religion. Others labelled him a pantheist; this seems more accurate. This concept became more popularly known as Nature's God. Wilson used this as the title for his final book in the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles.  

Spinoza also had a profound influence on Gilles Deleuze who regarded him as the Christ of philosophers in part, I guess, due to the concept of Nature's God making divinity immanently accessible to anyone. The traditional model of the Judeo-Christian God holds that "he" exists in a transcendental realm outside the  direct reach of humanity similar to Plato's Ideal Forms.  Deleuze does away with religious sounding language by resurrecting the concept of Univocity or Univocity of Being. Coming from the medieval thinker John Duns Scotus, GD applies it to Spinoza's view that the universe comprises a single substance in an infinite variety of forms. "Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself" (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition). All being speaks with a single voice (univocity) in many different ways describes how I understand the concept. This reminds me of viva voce from the Wilson quote above.

A qabalist, being trained in the art of looking at things backwards (see Magick in Theory and Practice by Crowley) might look at Pink's inclusion of dogs in his oeuvre, many of them talking, as a coded reference to God. "Is a God to live in a dog? No! but the highest are of us." (The Book of the Law II:19) I won't pretend to know what that means, I quote it to show a well-known (to occultists) reversal of dog. Joyce uses the dog/god wordplay twice in the Circe episode of Ulysses. Earlier, I listed a number of reversals in Vineland's last chapter, but left a subtle one out. The Bob Dylan reference has a musician alluding to Woody Guthrie ("This machine kills fascists" sign on his guitar) in search of the Vomitones and mentions an album title suggestive of a Dylan album. Woody searching for Dylan reverses the actuality that Dylan went in search of Woody Guthrie (literally and metaphorically) . . . and found him. Recall that Vineland ends with the family dog, Desmond, finding Prairie and thinking he was home. I also gave the Sufi code fog = face of god, representing, perhaps, another material encounter with Nature's God aka Life. "That is god  . . . a shout in the street" (Joyce, Ulysses). In a morning broadcast earlier this week Lon Milo Duquette mentioned that Kabbalah influenced both Kant and Spinoza. I personally Kant believe that ... not.

Todd May, a Deleuze scholar, says that Deleuze's favorite Spinoza quote is "We do not even know of what a body is capable." In other words, we don't know what a body can do – speaking of all material bodies. Pynchon's science fiction often explores the abilities humans may acquire through exercising their attention in certain ways. Some of the things he writes about seem possible, i.e. immanent: ESP, astral travel; others, like the Ninja Death touch, further out of reach, but you never know. 

Frederich Nietzsche also strongly influenced Pynchon, Deleuze and Wilson. Perspectivism, the idea that any given individual's reality seems an interpretation by that individual, abounds in Pynchon. Also, every reader will have a different perspective on TP's literature.  Nietzsche's philosophy affirms life. He opposed the Christianity of his day because he felt them to be nihilistic; they denied life on Earth telling believers to wait for the afterlife when everything will be groovy. Pynchon appears essentially life affirming, in my perspective, while showing much resistance to the affirmation as in Against the Day, or the fascism in Vineland and Shadow Ticket. 

I see the conclusion (much of the last chapter) of Vineland as very life affirming. Analyzing the symbolism in the last sentence and a bit we find:

"deer and cows grazing in the meadow" – different species in peaceful harmony; meadow = Old Norse for vin as in Vineland (courtesy of Spookah; see his comment in the last chapter's post for elaboration); the word "meadow" occurs twice in the long penultimate sentence of the book.

"sun blinding in the cobwebs on the wet grass, a redtail hawk in an updraft soaring above the ridgeline"

– much symbolism with "sun," the most obvious being Tiphareth which corresponds to the heart; "redtail hawk = Horus aka "the crowned and conquering child." Horus corresponds with the red planet Mars,

"Sunday morning about to unfold" – an additional solar affirmation.

"when Prairie woke to a warm and persistent tongue all over her face." – tongue suggests the Christian holy day Pentecost when "tongues like as of fire" (Acts 2:3) descended upon the disciples of Jesus after his death. The Hebrew word for tongue adds to 386 which corresponds with Jesus (Sepher Sephiroth).

The Hebrew letter shin looks like this: ש. It's associated with the element Fire. In Kabbalah, the three prongs represent "three tongues of a divine flame" (the Zohar). In Christian Cabala when shin descends into the name of God - YHVH (Jehovah) it forms the word YHShVH (Yeshua = Jesus). This symbolizes the descent of divine spirit into matter, or Qabalistically, Kether into Malkuth. The number 86 and chee-tos in Vineland  provide different semiotics representing Kether in Malkuth. In The Book of Lies Chapter 69 "The Way to Succeed and The Way to Suck Eggs!" Crowley writes of tongues and discusses their symbolism in connection with his word/formula ABRAHADABRA which he calls "the Holy Hexagram." The two interlocking triangles (looks like a Star of David) symbolizes the descent of spirit and the ascent of matter. 69 also simply indicates a reversal which we see that Pynchon loves to do. By Notarikon "warm and persistent tongue" = 96 = Work.

"It was Desmond, none other ..." I see the name Desmond as representing the  everyday, common WoMan similar to Joyce's HCE. See (or better yet, listen to) "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" by the Beatles. One huge difference between regular Christianity and Thelema is that the former worship an alleged historical character who promises to take care of things if you believe in him. The latter get instructed to make efforts to attain that level of consciousness on their own i.e. the level of Tiphareth which I consider conterminous with Leary's C6.

"the spit and image of his grandmother Chloe" – Grandmother reprises the Mother archetype. Chloe derives from an ancient Greek word meaning"young green shoot", "blooming" or "fertility" and serves as another moniker for the goddess Demeter. The Greeks had a festival in the spring called Chloeia to celebrate the return of plant life.  Chloe as "blooming" could refer to Leopold Bloom (central character in Ulysses) in homage to Joyce and/or to Mel Brooks who put Leopold Bloom into his film The Producers. According to Deleuze, sense must get produced (The Logic of Sense). Sense, in Deleuze's rendering, indicates not only linguistic meaning, but also something similar to Bergson's elan vital – vitality.

"roughened by the miles" – there always seems resistance to affirming life; related to the idea that the gnosis always gets busted from Cosmic Trigger I; one battle after another.

"face full of blue-jay feathers" – as discussed earlier, blue connects with Nuit, Crowleys Mom archetype. Attention is repeatedly brought to the striking blue brilliance of Frenesi, Prairie and Sasha's eyes in Vineland. "So she (Nuit) answered him, bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love . . ." (BoTL I:26). We also have "Babe in the egg of blue" referring to Hoor Pa Kraat, the female aspect of Horus. Jay appears a somewhat outdated slang word for a reefer joint. For some reason unknown to me Pynchon chooses to hyphenate blue jay in the last sentence in Vineland while the first sentence has blue jay without a hyphen. Maybe a typo? Blue jay appearing at the very beginning and the very end could allude to the circular nature of Finnegans Wake. 

"smiling out of his eyes" – reminds me of Learys SMI²LE formula. 

"wagging his tail" – a canine affirmation of life

"thinking he must be home." All kinds of obvious symbolism with this, but I'm reminded of a scene from Duck Soup. Pynchon seems a Marx Brothers enthusiast. He has various references to them throughout his works. 

This clip only runs for a minute. 

* * * * * * 

Thomas Pynchon's literature beautifully exemplifies Nietzsche and Deleuze's view of writers as "'physicians of culture' for whom phenomena are signs or symptoms that reflect a certain state of forces." Although written in 1990, Vineland presciently reflects current events most poignantly with the freedom v fascism dialectic. Deleuze writes, "The aim of writing is to carry life to the state of a non-personal power." He looks at the function of literature in an essay called "The Literary Machine." 

"For art, Deleuze argues, is essentially productive: the work of art is a machine for producing or generating certain effects, certain signs, by determinable procedures. Proust suggested that his readers use his book as an optical instrument, 'a kind of magnifying glass' that would provide them with 'the means of reading within themselves,' in much the same way that Joyce described his works as machines for producing 'epiphanies.' . . . The question Deleuze here poses to the literary work is not "What does it mean?' (interpretation) but rather "How does it function?' (experimentation)" - from Daniel W. Smith's  Introduction to Essays Critical and Clinical by Deleuze.

What kind of machine might Thomas Pynchon's literature be called? How does it function? By no means am I an expert on Pynchon, more of an enthusiast, but I'm brazen enough in my ignorance to hazard a guess. In the Introduction to Slow Learner where he mercilessly criticizes his early short stories, one inside look caught my attention as perhaps indicative of his oeuvre as a whole. Discussing the story "Entropy" he looks at the etymology of the word: "Well, according to the OED the word was coined in 1865 by Rudolf Clausius, on the model of the word 'energy,' which he took to be Greek for 'work- contents.' Entropy, or 'transformation-contents' was introduced as a way of examining the changes a heat engine went through in a typical cycle, the transformation being heat into work."

For the moment, until something better comes along, I choose to think of Pynchon's works as machines for producing "transformation-contents." Earlier I wrote to the effect that what you get out of Pynchon's books appears dependent on the energy put in to understanding them. It requires work of a certain kind. I suspect that simply the effort put in to following the plot with all its twists and turns, digressions, sidetracks and tangents; its obscure words, references and engineering details will necessarily bring about at least some small transformation in the reader's neural circuitry by just attempting to grasp what the hell is going on.

* * * * * * 

I thoroughly enjoyed One Battle After Another; perhaps the best action movie to flicker into these eyes.  Though not faithful to Vineland, as advertised, I strongly feel that director Paul Thomas Anderson channelled the spirit of it. For instance, since the beginning of this series I've been harping about the problematic fascist dominance of unbalanced, aggressive male energy. Col. Stephen J. Lockjaw, based on Brock Vond and brilliantly played by Sean Penn, gets called "Dickhead" the first time Perfidia Beverly Hills (based on Frenesi) addresses him. I saw other examples that make explicit themes I've written of, but don't wish to give too much away. I'll only say that the film makes a great adjunct for grokking the book, and vice versa.  

Shortly before embarking upon this journey, an idea got floated that maybe all this renewed Pynchon interest and energy might serve as a kind of resistance or counterpoint to the fascist power grab going on in the United States, and to some extent, in many other places around the world not fascist already. I considered it a kind of wishful thinking, but to an operator of magick, wishful thinking seems part and parcel of the territory. Then came the excellent report from A Building Roam titled "Return of the Counterforce" which echoes and elaborates upon this sentiment quite well. After voyaging through the powerful trifecta of Vineland, One Battle After Another, and Shadow Ticket I know longer consider it wishful thinking. It looks and feels to me like real magick; different forces at play.  

In actual life, Sean Penn, appearing in two of the three, seems an active and dynamic facet of the counterforce with his Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), "a nonprofit humanitarian organization that responds to disasters around the world." Their logo shows the C and O making an infinity sign. Infinity at the core seems quite appropriate to this Pynchon narrative.

I recently listened to a podcast called "Nietzsche's Most Important Teaching" about his essay "Schopenhauer as Educator."  Presented by Keegan Kjeldsen, he states his interpretation of Nietzsche's goal: ". . . to draw the heroic out of us. He wants to draw the aspiration for freedom out of the modern man." I get this feeling from Vineland, an aspiration for freedom. The heroic quite obviously gets drawn out of Bob Ferguson (based on Zoyd, played by Leonardo DiCaprio) in One Battle After Another. After the heyday of his revolutionary life serving as an explosives expert Bob settles into a passive stoner's existence raising his daughter, Willa. The heroic gets comically drawn out of him after Willa gets abducted by Lockjaw and he persistently endeavors to rescue her ... dressed like the Dude.

I have finished an initial go around with Shadow Ticket and recommend it highly. It seems as good or better than anything Pynchon has written. Information rich, it has way more than I could grasp in a single reading. I plan to read it again before writing a review though I don't know when.  Two more connections with Vineland to bring up here. Despite the action taking place in Milwaukee, Chicago, Central Europe, the Balkans and at or under the sea, the word "prairie" gets mentioned about 6 times though I wasn't keeping count; once near the very end. The theme of attention comes up a few times, though due to the density and often obscurity of the information in the story, if you blink, you'll miss it. 

NPR published an article the other day headlined: "Mental exercise can reverse a brain change linked to aging, study finds." It goes on to say: "A 10 week study of people 65 or older found that doing rigorous mental exercises for 30 minutes a day increased the levels of a chemical messenger acetylcholine by 2.3% in a brain area involved in attention and memory. . . . So at least in this brain area, cognitive training appeared to turn the clock back by about 10 years." Read Pynchon or fiction by Wilson or Joyce, etc, for rigorous mental training that's FUN!

'Vineland' reading group links page now complete

 

I am now caught up on the page that has links for all of the reading group posts on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland written by Oz Fritz and Eric Wagner. (You can also find a link to the page if you scroll down a bit on the right side of this page). Oz covered the last chapter with his most recent post, but if Oz and Eric have some further thoughts and want to do another post, they are welcome to send me something, and I will post it here and add it to the links page. Note that you can click the "Thomas Pynchon" tag to get more Pynchon material. The "Vineland" tag  points to posts that aren't part of the reading group. 

Of course, thanks to the comments from various people, there are good contributions from many of the blog readers. Spookah was particularly active, you can go through the links or click the "Vineland Online Reading Group" tag and find his many contributions. 

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 15

 

 "with fog still in the hollows"

By OZ FRITZ

Special guest blogger

"Shadow Ticket is brisker than Thomas Pynchon's other work, but it's full of his usual vaudevillian sensibility and it addresses his favorite theme: how to live freely under powerful systems of control."

– Andrew Katzenstein, The New York Review.

"I still didn't know what to do to develop Jung's fourth faculty . . . Intuition.

 That had to wait until I discovered Acid and Aleister Crowley." – RAW, Cosmic Trigger II.

"They were in a penthouse suite high over Amarillo, up in the eternal wind, with the sun just set into otherworld transparencies of yellow and ultraviolet, and other neon-sign colors coming on below across the boundless twilit high plain, and she was watching him now with newly cleansed attention, her light-bearing hair, against the simplicity out the window, a fractal halo of complications that might go on forever . . . one of those moments men are always being urged to respond to with care and sensitivity."

– Vineland, p. 381

Already I see parallels between Shadow Ticket and Vineland without yet reading the former. For instance, when Sasha and Frenesi first reunite (p. 361 - 362) they dance to the same kind of early jazz music featured in the forthcoming release. On a political/sociological level in Vineland, it seems the fascists have the upper hand. On the personal level, it appears that the main revolutionary characters have found a sense of joy and freedom in their lives despite the revolutionary dream having gone bust. Music has a prominent role in that joy and freedom. The "how" in the NY Review quote gets presented in Vineland through various techniques, instructions, hints, suggestions and allusions to Increase Intelligence – to raise consciousness. The lexicon of correspondences playing out through puns, music, TV and film associations, Qabalah, etc. plays a key role.

The Wilson quote is brilliantly elucidated in a piece by Michael Johnson, "23 Riffs On Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, Psychedelics, Intuition, and Everyday Metaphysics" found in Lion of Light. Intuition, related to ESP, seems a product of Leary's extra-terrestrial circuits, maybe C6. Crowley, in this context, seems a conceptual personae for Magick. Learning or knowing how to look up the correspondences of the Tree of Life seems a prerequisite for Magick. I began using Cabala after picking it up from  Cosmic Trigger I and Illuminatus! Frequent use of this art exercises and grows the intuition or esp like a bodybuilder going to the gym every day to develop their muscles.

The context of the Vineland quote comes about from Takeshi and DL making love after years of enforced celibacy toward each other. Metaphorically, "a penthouse suite high over Amarillo" puts them in the Supernal Triad on the Tree of Life. Amarillo translates as yellow from Spanish; yellow corresponds with Tiphareth on the Queen Scale of Color. This indicates stage 15, tantric sex, in Leary's 8 Circuit (24 stages) Model of Consciousness. Finally, ". . . a fractal halo of complications that might go on forever" makes a pretty good description of Pynchon's writing in general especially the epics like Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, and Against the Day.

We've seen several parallels between TP and RAW with one or two more to elaborate upon which we'll get to. But it also appears TP became familiar with Timothy Leary's post LSD philosophy. This isn't surprising. Leary read, reread and raved about Gravity's Rainbow when he acquired a jailhouse copy during his period of incarceration. It seems ironic that he didn't pick up on his own influence in Vineland. He probably didn't read it 4 times like I did before I saw it. Vineland gives Ralph Waldo Emerson "quoted in a jailhouse copy of The Variety of Religious Experience, by William James." Both James and Leary taught psychology and philosophy; both worked at Harvard. On page 339 we find Hector "watching Sean Connery in The G. Gordon Liddy Story." Liddy and Leary debated each other in a tour of America in 1982 that got made into a film, Return Engagement. They first met when Liddy, a prosecutor at that time, led a raid on Tim's house in upstate New York looking for drugs. Later, he became one of Nixon's henchmen, initially leading an illegal break-in of the office of a psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg.  Ellsberg became known for leaking the Pentagon Papers which revealed how much the U.S. government lied to the public about the Vietnam War. Not too long after, Liddy organized the break-in of the DNC offices in the Watergate complex that eventually brought down Nixon. In the 2023 mini-series White House Plumbers we learn that Liddy liked to listen to speeches by Hitler. So the G. Gordon Liddy story at the time he debated Leary shows another iteration of the fascism v. freedom dialectic. Having Sean Connery as the lead seems another of Pynchon's jokes as Connery found fame playing the suave and cool secret agent 007 James Bond while Liddy comes up looking just the opposite in his secret agent attempts.

More irony: right before the Liddy sequence we meet two film investors, Sid Liftoff  and Ernie Triggerman, who sign up Hector to make the first anti-drug movie. "Cid," a homonym of Sid, became a slang term for acid - LSD - in the 60's. "Liftoff" seems pretty self-explanatory if one has the slightest inclination for deconstructing signifiers á la James Joyce. Ernie's initials are E.T., the common abbreviation for extraterrestrial. Leary regards the four lower circuits in his model as terrestrial and the four higher circuits as extraterrestrial. 

Weed Atman meets Prairie and tells her about his Bardo. He tells her he almost reincarnated as her which I find interesting as earlier I called Weed's name a symbol of the being of Vineland. Weed Atman represents stage 13, the first stage of extraterrestrial consciousness. Leary and Wilson connect that with the Tarot card The Hanged Man in The Game of Life. Stage 14 corresponds with the Death card. Stage 13, like Weed Atman, has to go through death to get to the next stage. Weed describes Rex, the dude that killed him as a "ceremonial trigger-finger" which recalls Ernie Triggerman, ET. I mentioned an illustration of stage 15, tantric sex, above. At the start of that passage Takeshi calls it "Oriental love magic."

At the Becker-Traverse reunion, Prairie gets involved in a "nonstop crazy eights game" with her uncle Pinky.  I first got into Pynchon when invited to participate in a reading group looking at Against the Day. The first character in it, Randolph St. Cosmo reminded me of E.J. Gold. I told Gold that a famous writer seems to have based a character on him and that also wrote bardo-like sequences like he did. When I said it was Pynchon, he replied that Tom used to come to his classes down in L.A. and that he thought his name was pronounced "Pink-on." One of the more infamous places Gold gave classes was in a building on Cosmo Street, a street in the heart of Hollywood. St. Cosmo's partner is named Heartsease and she is the first to get pregnant in the novel. 

Timothy Leary felt young people held the keys to the future because they appear more open to innovation and change. They seem more adaptable, their belief systems less calcified. Chapter 14 radiates a sweet quality from Zoyd's devotion to baby, then toddler Prairie. After being set-up, Zoyd goes through a metaphorical death/rebirth at the prospect of going to jail for years separated from his daughter. He starts acting like a baby crying all the time. Another metaphorical birth into a higher stage of evolution occurs when DL and Takeshi start being lovers. Extraterrestrial levels of consciousness seem extremely volatile until stabilized through repeated exposure and exploration. Pynchon alludes to that here (p. 383): 

". . . though you could tell the Head Ninjette was interested at least in a scientific way in whether the Baby Eros, that tricky little pud-puller, would give or take an edge regarding the unrelenting forces that leaned ever after the partners into Time's wind . . ." He continues by illustrating some of the specific impedances or resistances to staying high. Timothy Leary, following Aleister Crowley, persistently applied scientific principles and techniques to the personal evolutionary process. The initials of "Baby Eros" spells BE. Hamlet's famous line" "To be or not to be that is the question" definitely applies to  residencies in the extraterrestrial territories of the brain and nervous system.

This recalls a scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life more effectively communicated through a video clip. It's titled "People Aren't Wearing Enough Hats" and clocks out at 1:40 in length. " Wearing Hats" can serve as a Cabalistic metaphor for trying to reach the ET circuits.

Something Bobby wrote in one of the Pynchon comments inspired me to consider the "soul" as in a box similar to the one Schrödinger placed a cat in his famous thought experiment where it's unknown whether the cat survives a quantum process that potentially releases a poison gas. The outcome appears uncertain until the box gets opened and a measurement taken. The soul's development looks unknown until we open the box (C1-4) at death –  either literal . . . or metaphorical as in the death of the ego. Sorry for the digression, I got distracted. 

 * * * * * * 

I've outlined a number of congruencies between the writings of Bob Wilson and Tom Pynchon. However, I missed the Nixon Monument image that appears in both Illuminatus! and Vineland. Thank-you Tom Jackson for showing it the light of day.  Cabalisticaly, they both use the word "colossus", but Pynchon alters course slightly. Illuminatus! signifies the former president by his full name, "Richard Milhous Nixon." RMN = 290 = "Thine enemy." Vineland has: " . . . on how the work was going on the new Nixon Monument, a hundred-foot colossus in black and white marble at the edge of a cliff . . ."(p. 205).  NM = 90 = The Emperor (tarot) qualified by 100 = The Moon (tarot). In a classic Pynchon technique, he mixes black and white for a symbolic chiaroscuro effect. The darkness of Nixon blends with "the odor of marijuana smoke" in the next sentence; young people ("student body") getting high. Then there's some word play with statues and "statutes about Being In A Place." BIAP = 93. Illuminatus! remains an important work in the canon of the 93 current, i.e. Magick and Thelema. As a student with a body I first learned about Aleister Crowley and his philosophy through Cosmic Trigger I and Illuminatus! I definitely wasn't alone. Grady McMurty, the Outer Head of the O.T.O. gave Lon Milo Duquette a copy of Illuminatus! after his initiation into the order. Duquette tells the story in Lion of Light. In Gold's school "Being" aka the Voyager replaces the soul as a term for what survives death. Crowley uses the word "place" magically in chapter 57 of the Book of Lies. Pynchon gives us a hawk, a symbol of Horus and the 93 current in the penultimate sentence of the book.

Pynchon circles back to this chiaroscuro image in chapter 14 referring to: "the increasingly mysterious activities necessary to get Hector's colossal dopechunk out of the house again." Colossal connects back to colossus; much much more marijuana in the picture. I consider this a form of magic realism.

At one of the talks they gave together at the 1980 Cosmicon Convention in San Francisco E.J. Gold and Robert Anton Wilson got into a discussion on the trope that the original script for the TV series Star Trek had been written by Gurdjieff; the main characters represented the different centrums with the whole ship being a composite terrestrial human voyaging out into extraterrestrial territories. Scotty, the ship's engineer personified the physical centrum, Leary's C1. Leonard McCoy, the ship's doctor aka Bones stood in for the emotional centrum, C2. Spock, obviously, portrayed the intellectual centrum, C3. Captain James T. Kirk represented the personality, C4. I  haven't heard this talk in a number of years, but do recall Gold and Wilson disagreeing on one of these attributions; not sure which one. This trope seems part of Star Trek lore, it wasn't originated by them, I don't know where it came from, but it was out there in the underground buzz. References to Star Trek appear in Vineland more than any other show. This esoteric, albeit fictional interpretation perfectly suits the theme in Vineland of being on the edge of humanity's next big cosmic step. The valorization of surf as in the College of the Surf fits this model too. The surf exists at the edge of sea and land. Going out into space represents humanity's next big evolutionary step according to Leary and Wilson comparable in scope to life emerging out of the ocean to evolve new land dwelling biological forms. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s it felt like we were on the edge of this; that's what was advertised.  The College of the Surf seems a humorous stand-in for Vineland itself considering the idea of educating young people for the next big evolutionary step.

Pynchon tweaks the Star Trek memes for his own purposes. He creates a fictional offshoot, Say, Jim (p. 370) where all the actors are black except the communications officer, Lieutenant O'Hara, an Irish twisting of Uhura. This harkens back to the Black Panthers acquiring Rex's precious wheels and naming it Uhuru – another example of the author mixing white and black. In this spinoff, whenever Spock comes on the bridge they all make the Vulcan hand salutes "and went around high-threeing" suggesting Binah. Chapter 15 shows multiple references to the Mother archetype both implicit and explicit. Hector, Sid and Ernie dine at Ma Maison. Interpreting the first word in English, the second in French gives "Mom's House." House = beth = The Magus (tarot). One of my favorites comes when Zoyd's lawyer brings up luck and chance culminating in the phrase "... life is Vegas." Vegas = 75 = Nuit.  When Crowley was asked what life is he answered "a play of Nuit" (Tobias Churton, Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin)

The riff on luck and Vegas ties in to Nietzsche's philosophy of valorizing operations of chance and random processes. "Nietzsche means that we have managed to discover another game, another way of playing: we have discovered the Overman (ET consciousness) beyond two human-all-too-human ways of existing; we have managed to make chaos an object of affirmation instead of positing it as something to be denied."

(Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche & Philosophy). 

When the three female Traverse descendants, Sasha, Frenesi and Prairie meet up at the reunion, Grandma Sasha breaks the ice by treating Prairie like a young child. They reminisce over baby Prairie (less than 4 months old) first noticing the Tube with Gilligan's Island. This appears another show where a ship enters the unknown away from most humans though this time unintentionally, only because they hit a storm and got lost. They have to learn to survive by their wits. It seems a little analogous to a new life coming into the world and having to learn all the basics of survival. In one of the MLA online courses RAW had Eric Wagner provide the Leary brain circuit correspondences for the crew on Gilligan's Island. I don't remember them all. The Professor obviously appears C3 and I remember the Skipper as C2. The name Gilligan when Cabalistically analyzed fits in with the lexicon and themes of Vineland. I'll save that for another time.

It delighted me to find a clear Bob Dylan allusion. Right near the end Prairie meets a young Russian fisherman looking for American rock and roll. He has an acoustic guitar "with Cyrillic stenciling on it, as if he'd been preparing to use it as a weapon." This alludes to the sign Woody Guthrie had on his acoustic guitar, "This machine kills fascists." Alexi asks Prairie if she knows the Vomitones "'83 Garage Tapes."

suggesting Bob Dylan and the Band's quite famous Basement Tapes. Dylan began his performing life imitating Woody Guthrie and hitchiked to New York to meet him. Pynchon even gives the genealogy of  a brief music reference. 

Desmond the dog seems to have been named after a character in the Beatles' "Ob la Di, Ob la da" song. Listen to it and you'll hear themes from Vineland. In one verse Desmond watches the children while his wife Molly does her face then goes singing with a band. In the next verse it's Molly who watches the children while Desmond does his face then sings with a band. Pynchon clearly loves to reverse things. In this chapter alone he reverses the orientation of Heaven and Hell, the skin color of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise and makes the Woody Guthrie-like character a Russian. 

Hector throws out a number when negotiating with Sid and Ernie: 2.71828 (p. 342). This is known as Euler's number. It's used to calculate compound interest, but also appears fundamental in differential calculus which measures rates of change. This might be another reference to Deleuze's philosophy of difference. He goes into differential calculus looking at how things change to become different though he never brings up Euler's number. Eula Becker Traverse is the matriarch of the Becker/Traverse clan. Make of that what you will.

Fog comes up repeatedly in Vineland, almost like a non-human character. The Sufis use that word as an acronym for "face of god." Most, but not all of the time, fog just seems like fog. Sometimes the Sufi pun works. It's also in the penultimate sentence.

I suspect Pynchon tricks the reader in the final paragraph of the novel. It seems ambiguous.

Vineland and RAW's Schrödinger's Cat end the same way: with something beloved returning home.

Thank-you everyone for your presence and attention.

Pynchon links

"Notes on Robert Anton Wilson and Pynchon's Vineland," a new Substack newsletter from Michael Johnson. 

Tyler Cowen reviews "One Battle After Another."  "I do not usually like Anderson’s films (apart from "Magnolia"), but this so far is the best movie of the year?"

Matthew Yglesias reviews "One Battle After Another." "Look only time will tell but first instinct is that this is a true masterpiece."

New York Times review: "Thomas Pynchon’s New Novel Isn’t His Best. It’s Still Good Fun."

New York Times guide to Pynchon's novels. Includes a discussion of Vineland. 

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 14

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Mucho Maas, a character from Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, gets mentioned on page 307. “Absquatulation” on page 308 means, “leave abruptly.” 

I feel grateful to get the chance to reread this book. In tracing the history of the US from the blacklist scandal to Nixon to Reagan, it helps me understand how we got Trump and the world of 2025. I don’t have a clear idea of where we will go in 2026 and beyond though. 

I like how this chapter foreshadows the ending of the book, and it makes me wonder why Pynchon called the novel Vineland. Also, do you consider Vineland science fiction? Certainly I’ve never seen it in the science fiction section of a bookstore, but the story does have a number of science fiction elements, from a UFO to thanatoids to other possible non-human intelligences. 

An 'Illuminatus!' reference in 'Vineland'?

Richard Nixon (public domain photo). 

From Illuminatus!:

The real bread was in the Colossus of Yorba Linda Foundation, which had been successfully raising money for several years to erect a heroic monument, in solid gold and ten feet taller than the statue of Liberty, honoring the martyred former president Richard Milhous Nixon. This monument, paid for entirely by the twenty million Americans who still loved and revered Nixon despite the damnable lies of the Congress, the Justice Department, the press, the TV, the law courts,met al., would stand outside Yorba Linda, Tricky Dicky's boyhood home, and scowl menacinglymtoward Asia, warning those gooks not to try to get the jump on Uncle Sammie. (Page 120, The Golden Apple). 

From Vineland:

... the new Nixon Monument, a hundred-foot colossus in black and white marble at the edge of the cliff, gazing not out to sea, but inland, towering above the campus architecture ... (Page 205, Chapter 11).

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 13

 

By OZ FRITZ

Special guest blogger

"Problems and their symbolic fields stand in a relationship with signs."  . . . "To learn to swim is to conjugate the particular points of our bodies with the singular points of the objective Idea in order to form a problematic field. This conjugation determines for us a threshold of consciousness in which our real acts are adjusted to our perceptions of the real relations, thereby providing a solution to the problem. Moreover, problematic Ideas are precisely the ultimate elements of nature and the subliminal objects of little perceptions. As a result 'learning' always takes place in and through the unconscious, thereby establishing the bond of a profound complicity between nature and mind." – 

– Deleuze, Difference & Repetition p. 164 - 165

The problem solving model of critical thinking has been around since at least the Ancient Greeks. Deleuze develops his model of the problematic field in relation to the concept of learning. A problem doesn't always mean a terrible thing. You could have the problem of finding the best way of expressing your love and gratitude to someone close. You might try to read their signs to get an indication for a solution. In Vineland, all the major characters have problems to solve right from the get go. Zoyd wakes up one fine summer morning only to remember that he has to pull off a stunt and get it televised to keep collecting his benefits; he's out of smokes and the dog ate all his breakfast cereal. Before too long, he has the Feds after him and can't even go home. Prairie desperately wants to learn about her mother. Takeshi has the problem of dying at any time from the Vibrating Palm technique DL did to him mistakenly and this also becomes her problem. Frenesi and Brock Vond have a serious problem with each other they never seem to try and stop solving. On a broader scale, we have the conflict between the union busters and the anarchists; fascism vs freedom. Unfortunately, the latter problem currently appears in full effect in the world outside.

A problematic field seems a multiplicity, i.e. many "problems" within the field. The fascism vs freedom issue, well articulated in Vineland, where the fascists appear to be winning, directly affects my daily life. I can no longer watch shows on the Tube the authorities censor because they don't like what someone said. This is happening now, in America. I'm also aware that this relatively small blow to my freedom appears next to nothing compared to other acts of fascist violence and terrorism around the world, but it seems a sign for what might get worse.

I have heard the tautology that in Engineering a solution to a problem presents itself in the way the problem gets stated. Clearly laying out a problem results in suggestions for its solution. The problem of freedom vs fascism could be looked at as social engineering. A solution or solutions to this problem, what Deleuze calls "lines of flight," might be in the signs Pynchon constantly provides – the puns, paradoxes, jokes, qabalah, T.V. associations, etc, etc, i.e  his lexicon. Some of these jokes and signs seem blatantly obvious, others deeply obscure. The fascism/freedom problem seems to go deeper and further than the events on the social level. The same problem shows up on the personal, individual level in the fascism of negative habits and patterns from the four lower neuro-circuits vs the freedom of action in the higher circuits. It could be called a problem of Hedonic Engineering.

A teacher in a so-called Mystery School will often create problems and challenges for the student. A good teacher knows exactly how much to push the student such that the problem forces learning but doesn't overwhelm them to the point where they can't deal with it. This is called brinksmanship. When Prairie goes to the Ninjette school she's given the problem of feeding a large crowd with not many ingredients to work with. Her solution consists of the Spinach Casserole with its UBI and giant slabs of baloney on a spit. 

The Deleuze quote gives the example of learning to swim. This applies just as well to learning to swim or surf higher consciousness. One of his idiosyncratic phrases may seem a little perplexing: "the singular points of the objective Idea." You can substitute "Problem" for "Idea" so in this case the objective Problem or Idea is 'to swim." The singular points are the swimming pool or body of water, a swim suit, etc. all the objective things necessary to swim. In terms of learning to swim in the higher dimensions the singular points might include a joint, a maritial arts class, an uplifting piece of music, etc. I would submit that Pynchon's convoluted writing style, the twists and turns, going off on tangents, plot elements that never resolve, all the jokes, paradoxes, puns, allusions, symbolism, Cabala, cultural associations and historical and other obscure references has the effect of inputting information into the reader's unconscious mind thus fulfilling Deleuze's requirement of learning. It's like listening to a dense piece of music, or maybe any piece of good music – too much information to take in on one listening. Some of it necessarily enters below our awareness into the unconscious mind. We play this music again and hear something completely different despite having heard it already. A great piece of music can yield new discoveries after hundreds of listens. I'm on my fourth time through Vineland with no shortage of fresh insights, surprises and getting jokes for the first time. Even if one never rereads this book, I suspect a portion of it remains in the unconscious going forward. 

To give an example of Pynchon's convoluted subliminal associations: we find a mention of Leonard Nimoy on p. 220. Nimoy most famously played Spock on the original Star Trek T.V. series but here he's mentioned in a show, "In Search Of" where he appeared as himself as the host. He 's mentioned in the same sentence as Jack Palance and his show, "Believe It Or Not." Both shows explored mysterious phenomena. At this point in the story Zoyd is wanted for a music gig, but he's missing in action: "nobody had seen Zoyd around for most of the week." 68 pages later on p. 288 Spock is mentioned, but not the Vulcan, rather Dr. Spock the pediatrician famous for his revolutionary ideas on child-rearing. Just before this name comes up, Zoyd once again appears to be missing: 

"'Where's 'at Zoyd at?' 

'He clocked out as soon as the kid was born, probably off on one of the lesser-known planets by now'"

The extraterrestrial comment provides an allusion with the Star Trek Spock. 

While we're on Star Trek . . . I found the scene where Rex gives his Porsche 911 to Pynchon's version of the Black Panthers (p. 230 -231) very interesting. Rex knew and loved his car, which he named Bruno, in every possible way. The Panthers,  called BAAD in the book, changed the car's name to UHURU which stands for Ultra Hi-speed Urban Reconnaissance Unit. The acronym seems to deliberately leave out the S for speed so that it has the same name as a well-known book on black culture, Uhuru: A Novel of Africa Today by Robert Ruark. Uhuru translates to "freedom" from Swahili. When actor Nichelle Nichols was tasked by Gene Roddenberry to come up with a name for her character on the fledging Tube series Star Trek she chose Nyota Uhura, the last name inspired by Ruark's novel. She was given the rank of Lieutenant and made the head Communications Officer. Nichols was one of the first black woman to have a lead role on a T.V. Series. After the first year she was ready to quit to take a job on Broadway. Roddenberry told her to take some time to think it over. That night she attended a N.A.A.C.P. event and was told a fan would like to meet her. That fan was Martin Luther King Jr. who told her she played an important role model and should continue. MLK's advice changed her mind and she stayed on.

So we have a Porsche 911 called Bruno donated to a revolutionary cause whose name changes to UHURU which suggests Lieutenant Uhura, Star Trek's Communication Officer. A car with a male name has this name transformed to a name associated with a well-known woman from the Tube. In the United States 911 is the number you dial for an emergency. I believe it's different in the U.K. and Europe. One could infer that Pynchon intends to communicate an emergency. The P in Porsche corresponds with the card known as the Blasted Tower or just the Tower in the Tarot. On 9/11/2001 two commercial airliners flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. I don't suggest that Pynchon consciously predicted the 9/11 tragedy, but when invoking the muse in the process of writing, you never know what will come through. Robert Anton Wilson has mentioned writing about events in Illuminatus! that later manifested in the world. Finnegans Wake also has some apparent time and event anomalies.

* * * * * * 

Chapter 13 brings us intimately into the world of Brock Vond for the first time along with the methods to his madness – his vision of law enforcement. A distinguishing characteristic of Nietzsche was his examination and consideration of the genealogy, or history, of different subjects; one of his masterpieces is "On the Genealogy of Morals." Michel Foucault is known for this approach as well, no doubt inspired by Nietzsche. Earlier, Pynchon provided some genealogy behind the anarchism Sasha and Hub practiced. The genealogy of Prairie seems very important in this book especially at the end. The genealogy of Vond's mission here gets connected with the so-called "father of criminology" Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) and his concept of misoneism – fear of the new. Misoneism seems the same as what Wilson means by neophobe. Lombroso is a real historical figure but, as far as I can tell, had nothing to do with misoneism. This may be Pynchon commenting on Lombroso theories, which I did not research, or commenting on Vond and Fascism in general. 

Like another bad guy, Captain Ahab, we discover depth to Brock Vond; he no longer appears a one-dimensional character. Page 274 - 275 has an interesting bardo dream sequence regarding his feminine side. Toward the end of this sequence Pynchon chooses the archaic word "counterpane" which I learned from reading Moby Dick means "bedspread." At another point Vond, scared shitless, directly confronts death in the battlefield and gets lead to safety by a Guide who observes some kind of grace protecting him.

P. 273 Brock Vond fantasizes about sex and his gun which implies a connection between unbalanced male sexual energy and violence.

The second part of this chapter concerns the events leading up to Prairie's nativity and what follows. Although subtly presented in the subtext, we see an intention to expose Prairie to some kind of cosmic influence at her birth. It reminds me a little of the plot of Aleister Crowley's novel Moonchild. To begin, the midwife's name is Leonard (p. 285). Most midwives are woman. Once again, and at a crucial point comes the male/female blending theme which appears crucial for getting into cosmic spaces. Leonard recalls Leonard Nimoy = Spock. Also, the name of the doctor in Star Trek is Leonard, Leonard McCoy.  Zoyd micro-doses some acid for the occasion "on the chance of glimpsing something cosmic that might tell him he wouldn't die." Among other things, he notices "the paisley patterns on Leonard's Nehru shirt" showing us Nimoy's initials which affirms the Spock connection. This paragraph of Prairie's birth ends with an explicit Star Trek reference. 

Not to mention the whole surf thing. Frenesi tells Sasha she wanted her baby to hear the surf when coming into the world. Sasha connects that with "positive vibrations" which invokes "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, the ultimate surfer band. We had the College of the Surf and for some unexplained reason, Zoyd's band "the Corvairs [were] billing themselves as the Surfadelics" at the joint where he and Frenesi first crossed paths. The general metaphor mentioned earlier: to surf = to ride the wave of higher consciousness rings true.

Surf = 60+6+200+80 = 346 in traditional Kabbalah. 346 = "Good pleasure; the Will power" this reminds me of Hedonic Engineering.

Surf = 60+6+200+6 = 272 in Crowley's Qabalah. 272 = "Earth," quite a suitable correspondence for someone named Prairie. The four Princesses in the Thoth Tarot correspond with Earth.

Assigning a Tarot card to each letter: S = Art; U = The Hierophant; R = The Sun; F = the Tower.

This holds relevance in my subconscious theater since I worked for years at a recording studio in Sonoma County named Prairie Sun.

We see the paradox of Frenesi in the mother archetype when she rejects her own baby at first. Near the end of the chapter she laments the loss of precious time with her own mother. 

A reason for the form of this chapter, starting with Brock Vond then changing to Prairie's birth with Frenesi as the through line, presents itself at the end of this adventure, but I won't give it away.

There's a shout-out  in this chapter to one of my favorite musician/composer/sound engineers, Frank Zappa.  

Next week: please read Chapter 14, pages 294-322

About the new 'Pynchon movie'

Paul Thomas Anderson (Creative Commons photo, details). 

One Battle After Another, the new loose adaptation of Vineland by director Paul Thomas Anderson, has gotten Thomas Pynchon's blessing, according to an interesting article at The Film Stage: 

“ 'Realistically, for me, Vineland was going to be hard to adapt. Instead, I stole the parts that really resonated with me and started putting all these ideas together. With [Pynchon’s] blessing,' Anderson notes, confirming he’s one of the rare individuals on the planet who has crossed paths with Pynchon, the reclusive postmodernist author whose new book Shadow Ticket arrives just after One Battle hits theaters."

Describing the new movie, the article says, "While the story of revolutionaries is inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland (moving up the events a few decades), Anderson’s film barely lifts a sentence from its source material, instead using just the basic structure to tell a story all his own."

I have not crossed paths with Pynchon (that I know of, of course) but when I read Chapter 11 of Vineland, I did wonder if Pynchon has been to Oklahoma, where I grew up and lived for any years and still have relatives; the description of Oklahoma City was accurate, and the details of the big storm coming into the city sounded like it came from someone who was familiar with Oklahoma's violent thunderstorms. I ran a couple of searches, but I can't find any proof Pynchon has traveled to Oklahoma.

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 12

Fred Astaire in 1941 (public domain photo). 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger 

Another tai chi reference on page 264: I started doing t’ai chi ten years ago, and I have not reread this book during that time. This morning I heard a bit of a review of the Sex and the City sequel on television, and while reading the scene of Frenesi and DL talking in Mexico, I imagined Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Catrall playing them. (They could take turns playing the parts, the way some actors take turns playing Iago and Othello.) 

I put an asterisk in the upper right hand corner of page. 265, probably back in 2006 when I taught this novel in a community college English class. I don’t remember doing it, and I don’t remember why, but I find this paragraph ominous in 2025: 

“Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program, isn’t it – dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity - ‘I don’t like the way it came out, I want it to me be my way.’ If the President can act like that, why not Brock?”  

The reference to Fred and Ginger on the next page makes me think of David Thomson’s idea of casting Fred Astaire as Dr. Jekyll and Jimmy Cagney as Mr. Hyde. Fred would have made a great Brock Vond. 

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 11

By OZ FRITZ
Special guest blogger

"The informal slogan around 24fps was Che Guevara's phrase 'Wherever death my surprise us.' It didn't have to be big and dramatic, like warfare in the street, it could happen as easily where they chose to take their witness, back in the shadows lighting up things the networks never would ..."– Vineland, p. 202-203

"Those thinkers in whom all stars move in cyclic orbits are not the most profound: whoever looks into himself as into vast space and carries galaxies in himself also knows how irregular all galaxies are; they lead into the chaos and labyrinth of existence."

– Nietzsche, The Gay Science 

The character Weed Atman has an interesting name. Sometimes Pynchon goes opaquely occult with his signifiers, other times he's screamingly obvious. Atman is a Sanskrit term for the True or Deep Self. It's the part of you that survives obliteration in death and gets reincarnated, according to Hindu doctrine. Atman can also get thought of as the essential nature of something. In philosophy they talk about the being of this or that. To give one example, Deleuze wants to find the being of the sensible in his philosophy of difference. Weed Atman could signify the being, or the essential character of Vineland given that various forms of cannabis consumption - weed - run throughout the book. Not necessarily the character Weed Atman, but his name, the only name in the book with this blatant a definition.

To state the obvious, marijuana has an explicit role in Vineland. After breakfast, Zoyd begins his day (and the book) smoking half a joint. If a reader proved highly suggestible, they'd already be stoned in the second page of text. We find two or three amusing cannabis references in the working practices of the 24fps enclave in chapter 10. There's another weed reference in chapter 11; I think a character turns up with a joint in their mouth. To state the less obvious, marijuana has an implicit role in this book. In chapter 10 we find DL's initials given a number of times and at least once in chapter 11.

DL = 34. Chapter 34 in The Book of Lies is called "The Smoking Dog".  Pynchon seems quite fond of both smoking (weed) and dogs. Vineland starts (the Copeland quote) and ends with a dog. I'll leave that for the reader to unlock.

DL's initials appear capitalized (although reversed) as Love and Death in "The Smoking Dog." I highly recommend reading that chapter and commentary as an adjunct to reading Vineland. It's easily found online and clocks in at less than two pages long. Crowley calls Love and Death "greyhounds" that chase us. Pynchon puts us in a greyhound bus station with Zoyd and a baby Prairie in a later chapter, 14, I believe. DL herself seems all about death and love with the vibrating palm delivering death and her love for Frenesi, Takeshi, and the gesture of love she showed Prairie. Also, D = daleth = Venus, the goddess of love.

Apart from entertaining his audience in such a delightful way, Pynchon provides keys for establishing a presence in the higher dimensions – Leary's brain circuits or systems 5 through 8. Weed Atman appears as one of two characters who starts out living but ends up dead, in the bardo as a Thanatoid. In general, the bardo can be thought of as the territory "in between." Metaphorically speaking, an explorer of higher modalities (brain circuits 5 - 8) needs to temporarily die to their conventional self image, their mundane identity (as determined by their experiences and actualizations in C 1 - 4) in order to establish a lasting awareness in C 5- 8. We can think of that presence in the higher circuits as our Atman, our True Self. Weed Atman, the being of Vineland, seems an obvious key for getting there. According to Wilson and Leary, marijuana activates C5. Though I suspect Pynchon doesn't care much for Bob Dylan (I could be wrong) the 24 fps slogan 'Wherever death may surprise us' reminds me of "Rainy Day Woman #12 & #35."

Weed Atman, the being of Vineland. I submit that atman symbolizes the land of the vine, the territory of the higher dimensions. Ingesting cannabis seems one easy way to start off in that direction when somewhat adhering to set, setting and dosage guidelines. According to Google AI's Overview: "A true vine is a long-stemmed plant that uses other objects for support as it climbs to reach sunlight. It develops specialized climbing structures like tendrils (eg., grapevines) or clinging aerial roots (eg., ivy) to attach to surfaces." This seems isomorphic to connecting more consciously with the inner galaxies that make up the atman.

* * * * * * 

This appears the 4th chapter in a row giving an emphasis on attention: "Then, in a shot of the whole crowd, she noticed this moving circle of focused attention as somebody made his way through, until a tall shape ascended to visibility. "Weed!" they cried, like a sports crowd in another country, the echo just subsiding before the next Weed!" This quote also could serve as an illustration of someone moving into the higher dimensions ("another country"). It will be observed by those who pay attention to these things that Pynchon's use of the SC combination has noticeably increased in frequency since Prairie made her Spinach Casserole with its UBI (universal basic ingredient though universal basic income works just as well in the occult symbolism of SC). Most of this chapter takes place at the College of the Surf; the quote has "sports crowd."

Earlier someone mentioned family as a recurring trope or theme in Vineland. In Chapter 11 we hear about "Weed's infamous family weekend get-togethers, when everybody was supposed to wallow in retro-domestic Caring and Warmth ...". Vineland ends with a big, annual family reunion. The only other main character who dies (maybe) in the book does so at the end. I have no idea if this has any relevance.

The storm that occurs when Frenesi and Brock are in Oklahoma that they also track on the Tube shows parallels with Pynchon's first published story, "The Small Rain." It's set in the aftermath of a weather event responsible for a lot of death. Like Wilson, Tom spreads his characters and themes throughout his written output. For instance, 86 has come up a bit in the Vineland discussion. Speaking of his younger self in the 3rd person on page 1 of his introduction to Slow Learner: "I mean I can't very well 86 this guy from my life." In the same introduction Pynchon explicitly connects the SC code with "The Small Rain" by informing us that the characters in it comprise a branch of the military called Signal Corps. The SC combo doesn't appear in the story at all.

The College of the Surf recalls a brief but scintillating adventure in my younger days. In 1978 a friend and I hitchhiked down to California from Western Canada. We spent a few days at Isla Vista, the locale of the University of California at Santa Barbara. One evening we hung out around the small night life area buying beer for underage students. We were underage too, the drinking age was 21 at the time, we were 18 but I guess we looked older due to our scruffy appearance from living on the road. The night before, we had tried staying in Santa Barbara on the beach, but were accosted by the police with their guns drawn on us – the only time that's happened to me. After searching us and failing to find any drugs, they took us to an area where homeless people camped and told us to get out of town before sundown the following day. After helping the students obtain their drug of choice, we dropped some acid and had a wonderful all night adventure finally crashing at dawn by the ocean. LSD gets a mention in Chapter 11.

The chapter ends with an interesting passage showing Frenesi reflecting on life, time and the way of service: "...time was rushing all around her, these were rapids and as far ahead as she could see it looked like Brock's stretch of the river, another stage, like sex, children, surgery, further into adulthood perilous and real, into the secret that life is soldiering, that soldiering includes death, that those soldiered for, not yet and often not in on the secret, are always, at every age, children" (p. 216). We see a lot there – Frenesi comparing her life to a river recalls Finnegans Wake; maybe a reference to Chapel Perilous; soldiering for children aligns with some lines from The Book of the Law, etc.  What struck me the most was that I had never considered surgery as a stage in life. But I guess as you get older and the body starts to fall apart all the medical stuff one has to go through does become a stage in life. I can relate to that.

Synchronicity: when researching atman I found out that the root word it comes from means breath. On Wednesday, someone I know very well went in for a lung biopsy and relayed a coincidence. One of the nurses asked what kind of music would he like to hear during the procedure. He said older Pink Floyd, please. When they wheeled him into the operating room the song "Breathe" from Dark Side of the Moon was playing. It couldn't be a more perfect choice, he thought.

Next week: please read Chapter 12, pages 218 - 268.

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 10

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. 

PQ on Pynchon

 PQ has a new post up about Thomas Pynchon, worth a careful read, here is the opening bit:

"Back in April, a screaming came across the sky, the announcement of a new Thomas Pynchon novel, to be published in October, entitled Shadow Ticket. This marks a literary event, an unforeseen comet spark in the darkness. Pynchon is arguably the greatest living novelist on the strength of Gravity's Rainbow (1973) alone, but the reclusive 88-year-old had not published any new books since 2013's Bleeding Edge, so his fans might've been forgiven for thinking his days of writing new stuff might be over."

The title of the piece is "Return of the Counterforce." Peter explains what the Counterforce is and reveals his favorite Pynchon novel. Here is another bit:

"I'm glad to see in the summer of 2025, Thomas Pynchon is now having a moment. It means great literature is having a moment. A new book from such a legendary writer is some of the best news of this year. I've been seeing copies of Vineland stacked forefront in bookstores across the country in the past year. A new movie inspired by Vineland is about to drop, with Benicio del Toro and DiCaprio. And then we get Shadow Ticket. Something like the counterforce is returning."

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 9

 

By OZ FRITZ
Special guest blogger

"Unfortunately for anyone's peace of mind, especially his own, a shaman's behavior will tend to be a blend of his most annoying manifestations, magnifying his complex conflictual relationship with social protocol; nerve-wracking non-sequitur and unexpected blasphemies constantly send ripples of shockwaves through unsuspecting bystanders; he seems utterly unresponsive to the most obsequious blandishments." E.J. Gold, Life in the Labyrinth.

Takeshi reveals his shamanic nature in this chapter beginning at the bottom of page 147: "Through years of stately unfoldings of the deep actuarial mysteries that allowed him to go on making a living, Takeshi had come to value and watch closely in the world for signs and symptoms, messages from beyond, and even discounting the effects of drug abuse, nothing about the city seemed quite right tonight."

"Stately unfoldings" is an interesting phrase; "stately" connects with the beginning of Ulysses,  a novel which unfolds in a way related to shamanic exploration. The beginning of Wikipedia's description of actuary also applies to a shaman: "An actuary is a professional with advanced mathematical skills who deals with the measurement and management of risk and uncertainty."

I see this as an inflection point in the book; from this point on the subject of death increases its presence dramatically. Takeshi is about to experience a series of events that puts him in a position of confronting the distinct possibility of imminent death directly every day. This plot point seems an excellent metaphor for the Sufi advice to die before you die; or for Castaneda's shamanic advice to always keep death just behind your left shoulder. We seem never more alive when faced with the prospect of dying soon.

Not only does Pynchon write about shamans, his writing exemplifies modern shamanism – going out into the unknown, coming back and writing about it; communicating his vision. The unknown includes crossing over to the other side through the veil of death. 

"Even an apparently simple thing like a common language which we are all forced to use in order to communicate with others becomes something different in the hands of a shaman. Shaman always seem to lean heavily toward those tooth- gnashing, fingernail-scraping, annoyingly Ivesian-Stravinskian-Schoenbergian ways of communicating that just don't seem to be able to conform themselves to well-defined human conventions." - Life in the Labyrinth. 

Pynchon was denied the Pulitzer Prize for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974. The jury who decides these things unanimously recommended it but the Pulitzer advisory board refused to give it to him on the grounds that the book was obscene and unreadable. No award was given that year. In Schrödinger's Cat, Robert Anton Wilson asks if his novel might not serve as a shamanic manual. Some of the more adventurous and imaginative Quantum physicists perform shamanic functions, though usually communicating in a very technical way. Writers like Pynchon, Wilson, Joyce and others use literature and literary tricks to bring the attentive and ambitious reader into their headspace, into the non-ordinary territory they've explored.

"A shaman will often seem to make a sudden shift to left field, leaving the linear literal mind holding the bag, so to speak, temporarily off-balance and unsure of its footing, but the shaman knows that nothing is ambiguous; he sees the underlying causes and knows how to attune himself to them. He knows the irony of expectation, and the ecstasy of disappointment; he has learned to follow life as one's vision follows the face of a lover." - ibid.

Pynchon shows great fondness for the letter V; it becomes a tag for him. We can only speculate why. Attentive readers have already observed this in Vineland.  As a shifting signifier, his affinity for this letter likely has multiple explanations. Of course, his first novel is V. Pynchon's most famous teacher at Cornell, Vladimir Nabokov has a narrator called V in one of his novels, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Parallels in plot, theme and writing style between the two books have led some scholars to infer Nabokov's influence. Nabokov's full name begins and ends with a V. He claims to have no memory of Pynchon at Cornell. His wife Vera (whose full name also begins and ends with a V) recalls grading Pynchon's papers.

Eric Wagner recently wrote to me: "The Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945, Tom Pynchon's eighth birthday, Victory in Europe Day, V-E Day. I have long suspected that that influenced Pynchon's interest in the letter V and in the end of the war in Europe in Gravity's Rainbow."  That book, his third, firmly established him in the literary world. The V-2 rocket plays a central role in it. So, Pynchon turned 8 on May 8th of '45 - V-E Day. At a critical juncture in this chapter (and the book), shortly following the Vineland quote above and a few steps before Takeshi's life irrevocably changes, he can "hear large V-8 engines idling" (p. 148).

The passion for V stretches across TP's oeuvre including the little nonfiction he wrote. Evidence for it turns up in the introduction he wrote for his good friend Richard Farina's novel of the '60s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. In the introduction to Slow Learner discussing his short story "Entropy" and the origin of this word coined by Rudolf Clausius, Pynchon comments: "If Clausius had stuck to his native German and called it Verwandlunginhalt instead, it could have had an entirely different impact." This is more commonly written as two words, Verwandlung Inhalt and translates as "transformation content." Kafka's most famous short story, "The Metamorphosis" has the German title Di Verwandlung. The reader's transformation or metamorphosis seems one major intent of TP's writing. 

If we may go into the weeds for a moment . . . I was startled by a character in Bleeding Edge that seems to correspond V to the Hebrew letter Feh, a variation of Peh –  "Phipps Epperdew, better known as Vip ...". The difference between Peh and Feh delineates the sound of the letter. Peh gives the hard p sound while Feh gets pronounced more like an f or ph. Phipps has both in one name. Peh and Feh both = 80 in Gematria. Therefore, in traditional Kabbalah both the English P and F letters = 80; V traditionally corresponds with Vau = 6. Crowley changed that in his Qabalah reckonings by assigning F to Vau ostensibly due to F and V sounding similar though it also aided his calculations. I suggest that Pynchon uses the same logic (sound similarity) to reverse Crowley by corresponding V with Feh thus giving it the value of 80, in this instance. What does this have to do with the price of tea in China, or the price of hash in Morrocco? Maybe nothing. It's explored more in my post on Bleeding Edge here: https://oz-mix.blogspot.com/2021/08/bleeding-edge-pynchon-robert-anton.html

In Cosmic Trigger Vol. 1 Robert Anton Wilson describes all the synchronicities he experienced with the number 23 as a key into his Cabalistic lexicon. Pynchon uses 23 as a tag for Wilson in Bleeding Edge– see my blog above. V might be a key into unlocking TP's cryptography. Focusing back on Vineland: though only halfway through we can already observe the predominance of female characters, intelligence, and energy along with the struggles they face. We have the Sisterhood of lady ass-kickers and DL harassing an all-woman motorcycle club. By its shape (the shape of the individual letters holds significance in Kabbalah), the letter V suggests the female reproductive system as well as being the first letter of vagina. Giving V and P the same mathematical identity – Peh and Feh both = 80 – suggests a union of penis (Peh) and vagina (Feh), the blending of male and female as frequently discussed regarding Vineland. Male and female symbolically represented as different aspects of the same general letter suggests Adam Kadmon a symbolic composite being comprised of the balanced union of male and female.

Earlier, in connection with chapter 5 and the TV show Hawaii 5-0, we stated that 5 appears significant to the lexicon of this novel. At the end of this chapter, 5 appears both explicitly: "zigzagging toward I-5" and implicitly:

"DL driving, singing
Oh, kick out the jambs, motherfuck-er,
'Cause here comes, that Stove once again –
You though I was somethin' in Olathe,
Wait till, you see me in Fort Wayne"

Though all the lyrics are different except the first line, to me, this appears an obvious reference to the MC5 song "Kick Out the Jams," a proto-punk rock song. The Fort Wayne reference conjures Wayne Kramer, a co-founder and co-leader of the MC5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvJGQ_piwI0

Listening to the first 15 seconds seals the deal about that. Slight digression: Illuminatus! has people carrying signs saying "Kick out the JAMs" which in that case stands for the Justified Ancients of Mummu (Illuminatus! p. 127 -128 Dell omnibus edition - thank-you Vineland wiki). Five pages before that in Illuminatus! a TWA stewardess finds notes left behind by a "John Mason" on his way to Mexico City (where Pynchon lived at one point in the 60s). Wilson and/or Shea begin riffing on 5 a little way into these notes:

"Christianity all in 3s (Trinity, etc.) Buddhism all in 4s. Illuminism in 5s. A progression?
Hopi teaching: all men have 4 souls now, but in future will have 5 souls. . . .
Who decided the Pentagon building should have that particular shape?
'Kick out the Jams' ??? Cross-check.

. . .

D.E.A.T.H. – Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn. Does Pynchon know?" 

                                                                    – ibid. p.123 (italics in the original).

The way I read this: Wilson & Shea wink at Pynchon in Illuminatus! and Pynchon winks right back at them in Vineland through the shared rubric of "Kick out the Jams."

V also = the Roman character for 5. Vine = 133 in its Hebrew spelling. 

133 (vine) x 5 (V = vagina) = 665 = "The Womb" in "Sepher Sephiroth." Adding the upright 1( a phallic symbol) gives us 666, a solar number (Tiphareth thrice), the number of THE BEAST and "The Name Jesus." DL briefly refers to Takeshi as a beast when having sex in this chapter. The other city mentioned when DL sings her version of "Kick out the jams" is Olathe, Kansas. Olathe is a Shawnee word for beautiful, another reference to Tiphareth

 Circling back and speaking of reversals, we find an example regarding V in this chapter with Brock Vond (BV) balanced by Vato and Blood partners in "V & B Tow company." Vond and Vato = two proper names starting with V with an opposite qabalistic sense. Vato  = 86 = "A name of God asserting the identity of Kether and Malkuth" as we saw earlier with the channel 86 TV station. Blood describes a Hermetic metaphor for how an individual might go about uniting Kether with Malkuth aka uniting the macrocosm with the microcosm. This gets made evident and put into the student's body and heart along with the intellect through practicing "The Mass of the Phoenix" (takes about 10 minutes), chapter 44 in The Book of Lies; 44 = blood.  

Tow recalls "Fascist Toejam" (kick out the fascist jams) as well as "Cheetos" = Chi (Chinese vital energy = Kether; mentioned a few times in this chapter and key to what DL does to Takeshi)) + toe or toes (Malkuth on the Tree of Life) as I elaborated earlier. Vato = V + a (aleph = The Fool, an androgenous symbol) + to (pronounced toe).

Vond, on the other hand, = 130 = The Devil (raw male energy) = the 5 of Cups (disappointment, trouble, pain, grief and represents a lack of fulfilment or non-attainment of expected results which we get told is Brock's situation regarding Frenesi. Both Brock and Prairie search for Frenesi). But it doesn't seem all black and white. 130 also = "Deliverance" and "The Angel of Redemption" a version of which may or may not happen to Brock during the novel's conclusion; the reader will have to decide.

* * * * * *

A comment I couldn't get to last week: the emphasis on attention in chapter 8 reveals the strong influence of Gold's school. Prairie sees the Head Ninjette emerge from invisibility and asks if she can learn how to do that. "Takes a serious attention span." . . . "Common sense and hard work's all it is. Only the first of many kunoichi disillusionments – right, DL? – is finding that the knowledge won't come down all at once in any big transcendent moment." There's also a short phrase about attention, great  shamanic advice, in chapter 9.

Chapter 9 Notes:

p. 141, a passage covering most of this page got me considering Frenesi = a manifestation of Eris. Hail Eris!

P. 142, "Wawazume Life & Non-Life" seems the first introduction to the bardo chambers up ahead.

p. 147, "shabu" – Japanese slang for speed.

Back on p. 128 Pynchon makes a connection to his first novel, V. In that book, one aspect of V turned out to be Victoria Wren. In Vineland, the Sisterhood's financial consultant is "Vicki down in L.A. who moves it all around for us." – the only mention of her in the book.

In Straight Outta Dublin Eric Wagner writes of the importance Robert Anton Wilson placed on masks and their various ramifications. Chapter 9 brushes upon the subject of masks in a few different places – chapter 8 too, I believe. The chapter in Life in the Labyrinth following the one with the quotes above talks about masks. It's called "Shapeshifting Up the Totem."

Chapter 9 has two or 3 very subtle allusions to the Sufi classic, The Conference of the Birds by Attar. It seems very related to shamanic voyaging if not identical or close to it. Also at least a couple more music references: "People Are Strange" by the Doors when DL assembles a mask and disguise for herself and "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen with the lyric commonly misheard as "Me gotta go" (p. 190). That lyric seems a shamanic prerequisite: you gotta drop the ego, at least temporarily, to access the higher dimensions. 

Next week: please read Chapter 10, pages 192 - 203