Reader's Guide to Vineland

p. 164 "Detractors included...managed to keep." A silly sentence, written in painful mock-German
syntax for no discernible reason.
p. 164-165 "Taiwanese Healthy Brain Aerobics" More foolishness, this time mixed with music. The
selection of tapes for Puncutron listening includes The All-Regimental Bagpipes play Prime Time Favorites (the
Tube again!), and perhaps Pynchon's best judgmental title: The Chipmunks Sing Marvin Hamlisch.
p. 166 "...men convinced us that we were the natural administrators of this thing 'morality'..." Sister
Rochelle's feminist Eden parable suggests an interesting modern scenario: Frenesi = Eve, DL = Lilith, Vond =
Serpent. This would help explain Frenesi/America's irresistible attraction for the authoritarian Vond.
p. 167 "The Ordeal of the Thousand Broadway Show Tunes" Transcendental malarkey.
p. 167 "YOUR MAMA EATS, how can we resist?" Aggro dining.
p. 169 "Cheapsat" Preterite communications personified.
p. 170 "Like Death, Only Different." While this is a nice definition of the "oid" suffix, it begs the
question of exactly what Thanatoid's are.
p. 170 "But we watch a lot of Tube" Thanatoids watch lots of TV, trying to advance further into the
condition of death. This makes them Reaganite kids? Couch potatoes? Embittered hippies? Everyone in
America? Anyway, advancing further into the condition of death is only a restatement of the law of entropy,
which may mean that everyone in the universe is a Thanatoid.
p. 171 As Takeshi reaches for pie, he's "checking the edges of the frame." Does this mean he's in a
film? Or is Pynchon just grabbing a handy cinema term?
p. 171 Takeshi tries to "go the opposite way! Back to life!" This anti-entropic movement makes him a
great hero, a symbol of intelligence (the only truly anti-entropic entity), the life force.
p. 172 "Shade" (as in Shade Creek) = ghost.
p. 172 "thick fluids in flexible containers" = scumbags.
p. 172 "The Woodbine Motel" Harks back, perchance, to the 1870's, the Union Pacific railroad scandal,
and the Credit Mobilier. When one party was asked, under oath, where the money was, he replied that it had
"gone where the woodbine twineth."
p. 172 "The Zero Inn" Very thanatoid, preterite and Zoyd-like. Also another zero.
p. 173 Thanatoids are "victims of karmic imbalances -- unanswered blows, unredeemed suffering..."
So are the Thanatoids victims of the Seventies? Or another version of the preterites in Gravity's Rainbow?
Maybe they're just over-determined ghosts of some sort. This description is similar to the kind of thing that
psychics talk about when they're trying to make your poltergeists go away; it's the unresolved baggage that
keeps the ghosties on the move, and out of wherever they belong. Remember, too, that Shade Creek is "a
psychic jumping-off town" where the Thanatoids wait "for the data necessary to pursue their needs and aims
(i.e., ghostlike revenge) among the still living..." (p. 171)
p. 173 "Although the streets were irregular and steeply pitched..." The description is an attempt to
capture the effect of an Escher drawing--or perhaps the expressionist sets in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920].
p. 174 Thanatoids are injured by "what was done to them." Here they seem like left-over hippies,
Vietnam vets, America's victims. Preterites who want revenge.
p. 175 "Karmic adjustment" Well, yes, it's a nice progression from insurance adjustment, but what does
Takeshi actually do? Prairie is still wondering on page 192, and DL never lets on. In any case, it looks like these
Thanatoids are dead California yuppies; a resource to be exploited by preterite tradesmen.
p. 175 "interesting work with airplanes" So, during World War II Takeshi was a kamikaze -- hence the
same Takeshi who's in Gravity's Rainbow! (See Viking edition, page 690) This brings up an interesting, though
peripheral issue: As a Kamikaze, Takeshi flew a Zero. A-and there's a reference on page 672 (of GR) to "Zeros
bearing comrades away," reminding us of those human lives as binary code in God's PC. As we've noted, there
are lots of other "zero" reverences (that's a pun, not a typo) in Vineland.
p. 176 "Domo komarimashita!" = Japanese for "Thanks a lot!" or "You're welcome."
p. 178 "Interpersonal Programming and the Problem Towee" Pynchon definitely has an attitude on
this kind of California stuff. He also seems to have a grudge against Mercedes drivers.
p. 178 "Sounds like the team I bet on last week." Vato gets to make the bad pun this time. This is a great
montage of the growing relationship between Vato, Blood, Takeshi, and DL.
p. 179 "Vato wanted it to be a sitcom." Another example of how deeply TV has invaded our thoughts.