Reader's Guide to Vineland

p. 29 "the samurai condition" The notion of a samurai "always being prepared to die" will be echoed on
page 161 when Takeshi is shown to be technically dead, hence living without fear of death, hence always
prepared to die. Which makes him a perfect samurai. Or Thanatoid.
p. 31 "maybe it goes beyond your ex-old lady..." Pynchon introduces the paranoid conspiracy element
he (and we) love so much. Nothing is what it seems; there's always some mystery behind everything.
p. 31 "zomoskepsis" As far as we can tell, this is a made-up word. But it's well-made, and means just
what it says: The study, or contemplation, of soup or meat broth. Pynchon seems to enjoy making up words.
Now and then you run across another "skepsis" word. Two of our advisors spotted "omphaloskepsis" (navelgazing)
in the beginning chapters of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.
p. 31 "Nothin' meaner than an old hippie that's gone sour." Pynchon himself?
p. 32 "Check's in the mayo" A brilliant throw-away Feghoot. In the fifties, a science fiction writer
named Grendel Briarton wrote a series of short, funny pieces for Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine titled,
"Through Time and Space With Ferdinand Feghoot." They all worked the same way: establishing a silly and
complicated story line for the sole purpose of setting up a painfully outrageous pun. Pynchon is addicted to the
form; one of the best Feghoots ever written is the "Forty million Frenchmen" gag ("for DeMille young
Frenchmen...") on page 559 of Gravity's Rainbow.
p. 33 "National Endowment for Video Education and Rehabilitation" Dr. Deeply's Tubal detox
operation (NEVER) is clearly a gag on Betty Ford's "Just Say No" Drug Abuse Clinic. This is also the first
statement of a central theme: America's national addiction isn't to drugs, it's to the Tube.
p. 33 "Hector...hasn't quite been himself, signed himself in with us for some therapy..." Another
reference to the vicious addictiveness of TV.
CHAPTER 4
Lotsa action in this chapter. Zoyd goes off to harvest crawfish at RC and Moonpie's. Then there's a
flashback to his hippie wedding with Frenesi -- followed by a flashforward to a short scene with Prairie. Zoyd
delivers crawfish to Vineland restaurants with funny names. He meets his old pal Van Meter in a bar and they
talk about Frenesi. Zuniga is there too; he has, it seems, escaped from Dr. Deeply's Tubal Detox clinic. In a
flashsideways we meet Rick and Chick, Vato and Blood, and the Marquis de Sod.
Suddenly, maybe-the-cops (actually it's Brock Vond) seem to be after Zoyd. (Why? Pynchon never explains
this very well. It may have something to do with Frenesi, Zoyd's ex-wife, and Vond's jealousy of her -- despite
the fact that she's got a new husband, hasn't seen Zoyd in years, and is still in Vond's tight grasp. More likely,
Vond is after Prairie; his motivation is only suggested, but it's possible that he wants to recreate his earlier
sexual liaison with Frenesi. If (as Vond later claims) he is really Prairie's father, this would be incest!) In any
case, men-in-uniform bust into Zoyd's car, which someone else is driving, and break into his house. Suddenly,
Zoyd is on the lam. He calls Dr. Deeply to come get Zuniga, but before the Doc shows up Zuniga identifies
Brock Vond as the source of Zoyd's cop problems. Zuniga says he wants Frenesi to make a movie. The Doc
arrives and takes Zuniga away. Zoyd and Prairie talk in bed (in a borrowed camper) about Frenesi. Zoyd
mentions "a deal." Prairie goes off with Isaiah.
p. 35 "imbrication" An overlapping, like leaves, or certain geological strata.
p. 35 "depraved yuppie food preferences" Go get 'em, TP!
p. 35 "RC and Moonpie" Names taken from Big Bill Liston's fifties hillbilly hit, "Gimme an RC Cola
and a Moonpie."
p. 37 "Beer riders" A nice conceit, typically Pynchonian: kamikaze rednecks racing through the tule fog.
p. 37 "behind a 409" 409 = a big V8 motor.
p. 37 "white presences, full of blindness and sudden highway death..." Echoes the "white visitation" of
Gravity's Rainbow, as well as Melville's whiteness of the whale. Also a pungent evocation of graveworms:
There's more death in this phrase than meets the eye, foreshadowing the Thanatoids.
p. 37 "...all at once, there in the road, a critter in a movie..." A Japanese horror movie, no doubt! (See
note, p. 65.)