Reader's Guide to Vineland

as she shifted gears... blending finally into the ground hum of freeway traffic far below."
go! Glasspack = hot-rod mufflers.
Go, Pynchon,
CHAPTER 8
DL takes Prairie to her secret retreat, the Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives. We get a brief history of the
order. We meet head Ninjette Sister Rochelle. Prairie takes over the kitchen. Rochelle reveals that the SKA
computer has a file on Frenesi. Prairie checks it out, and a long series of flashbacks begins. We learn that during
the sixties Frenesi was a member of a radical Bay Area filmmaking collective called 24fps. A nested flashback
focuses on DL: During the sixties DL was a tough (presumably lesbian) motorcycle babe who met Frenesi
during a street riot. A sub-nested flashback reveals that before that, DL was an Army brat who got into martial
arts, went to Japan with her dad, and met a martial arts teacher (Inoshiro Sensei) who taught her a series of
secret fighting techniques called ninjitsu (the discipline of the ninja--plus certain forbidden extensions). The
flashbacks dissolve gracefully back to the present, with Prairie and DL talking. Prairie asks DL about her
partner Takeshi.
p. 107 "Sisters of Kunoichi Attentives" This is a nice satire on Esalen-type self-realization outfits. The
acronym, SKA, also refers to Jamaican pre-reggae pop music from the early sixties, like Prince Buster, and the
Skatallites.
p. 107 "pepinares" = cucumbers. See also the Cucumber Lounge. Why so many cucumbers?
p. 109 "Can you cook?" The Head Ninjette's first words to Prairie are not sexist, but a desperate plea
made in hope of repairing the sisterhood's food karma, which is badly out of balance. Prairie actually does the
job, largely via corny, middle-American preterite classics like spinach casserole and bologna glazed with grape
jelly!
p. 111 "Cream of mushroom soup" = Universal Binding Ingredient. Great gag, maybe even a true insight
(Campbell's cream of mushroom soup being the central, and not-so-secret, ingredient of the ubiquitous, and
often despised, "family dish" tuna noodle casserole). All stated in Pynchonian mock-technoese.
p. 111 "memorizing the shadows" Nice touch. Making use of the shadows is a ninja specialty --
supposedly, simulates invisibility to the rest of the world.
p. 112 "gaga little twits...lookin' for spiritual powers on the cheap. Thinking we'll take 'em through
the spiritual car wash, soap away all that road dirt ... everybody hangin' around the Orange Julius next
door go 'Wow!'..." Terrific, angry description/destruction of get-wise-quick spiritual scams.
p. 113 "casseroles beginning to redline" A clever application of racing slang (redline = engine about to
blow up from revving too fast) to cooking (casserole about to burn).
p. 114 "24fps" fps = frames per second. Motion picture film is projected at 24 frames per second. The
radical filmmaking group seems to be based on a real "revolutionary film collective," sf newsreel -- right down
to the lower case letters. It's also a subtle echo of Jean-Luc Godard's famous dictum that "Cinema is truth 24
times a second."
p. 114 "peripheral whiteness...of her mother's ghost..." Lovely writing. The ensuing discussions of
computer ghostliness may or may not have a bearing on the "what is a Thanatoid" question. In addition,
consider Pynchon's previous connections with whiteness (see note for page 37).
p. 115 "...a sound chip playing the hook from the Everly's..." The computer notices that Prairie is
drifting, and plays the riff from "Wake Up Little Susie." Cool! Where can we buy this utility?
p. 115 Computer says, "Why good night yourself..." This sudden, right-angle turn into whimsy is a rare
false note. In a way it's a relief to know that Pynchon, like Lawrence of Arabia [1962] "isn't perfect."
p. 115 "Back down in the computer library, in storage, quiescent ones and zeros scattered among
millions of others, the two women...continued on their way across the low-lit campus, persisting,
recoverable..." This gorgeous bit of writing provides a sensational transition between Prairie's computer
research and the continuation of the flashback. It also leads into one of the flashiest sequences in the book (i.e.,
one with particularly flashy writing) -- and continues the binary metaphor initiated two chapters previous.
p. 115 "double-cross whites" = amphetamine tabs marked by a cross.