Reader's Guide to Vineland

p. 310-311 "Dr. Hugo Splanchnick" The entire Splanchnick sequence is immensely funny, including
Pynchon's use of "snoot croaker" to describe the doc's specialty.
p. 311 "stop-me-search-me VW bus" The epitome of Sixties California hippie culture, which
(wonderful to say) continues to survive, everywhere, to this very day.
p. 311 "'Aw' said the dopers, the speech balloon emerging from their tailpipe" All of a sudden, we're
in 'toontown.
p. 312 "...me entiendes como te digo?" = Spanish for "Unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"
p. 313-314 "I guess it's over..." It seems likely that this is Pynchon delivering the "nut paragraph," as
journalists call the central idea in a story. This dialogue seems heartfelt -- especially the stuff about the tube
("keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for,") and rock 'n' roll ("just another way to claim our attention,") and
"Soon they're gonna be coming after everything, not just drugs but beer, cigarettes, sugar, salt, fat, you name it,
anything that could remotely please any of your senses...," and "It was the way people used to talk." Yes, it was.
p. 313 "Please go careful, Zoyd" Mucho has made much the same settlement with the establishment that
Hub Gates has: joined the approved union, settled down, stopped making a fuss.
p. 314 "Enjoy it while you can, while you're light enough for that glass to hold you." Prairie on top of
the Hip Trip pinball machine is a marvelous image capturing the fragility of the moment, the certainty of loss,
age, death.
p. 314 "Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge represents a transition, in the metaphysics of the region"
Great intro to Zoyd in Vineland.
p. 320 "spool tenders, zooglers, water bucks and bull punchers" Logging jobs.
p. 321 "Many would be the former tripping partners and old flames who came over the years to deal
with each other this way across desktops or through computer terminals, as if chosen in secret and sorted
into opposing teams...." Some folks get on Welfare, and others administer it. Another incarnation of the
binary/preterite metaphor.
CHAPTER 15
A long, complicated, final chapter.
Morning breaks in a pasture, as everyone gets ready for the annual Traverse-Becker Family Picnic, the big
get-together of Frenesi's folks (i.e., The Left). Morning cracks also in Shade Creek. Flashback to Prairie and her
hard-core sexpot pal Che, prototypical teenage mall rats in Southern California. A nested flashback to the Great
South Coast Plaza Eyeshadow Raid. Flashforward to the original flashback, in which the girls raid Macy's,
stealing sexy lingerie (easy there, Pynchon).
We flashforward again, but not all the way--only far enough to witness Vond's raid on Ditzah's house. All
the 24fps footage is burned. Back in the present Prairie, DL and Takeshi head for Shade Creek. CAMP antimarijuana
raids (courtesy of Vond and his army, now bivouacked at the Vineland airport) are coming on a daily
basis.
Unlikely as it seems, Zuniga's anti-drug film is actually in production! A crew is on location in Vineland,
preparing to film Frenesi's biopic as an exploitation feature. Flashback to Zuniga's Tubal Detox treatment,
which seems woefully ineffective. There's a funny song about TV: "The Tube." Flashforward (or sideways) to a
meeting in which Zuniga cuts the film deal with two Hollywood producers; the ways are greased by the fact that
he has them at his mercy on drug charges, not to mention the fact that the film community is in terror of a
threatened Drug Use Investigation reminiscent of the HUAC hearings.
Zuniga finds out that Frenesi and Flash have surfaced in Las Vegas; he flies there to meet her, in hopes of
convincing her to appear in (and maybe even direct) the film. They meet at the Club La Habenera, an evocation
of pre-Castro Cuba. There's a funny song ("Es Posible.") Frenesi is less than enthusiastic until Zuniga shows her
a photo of Prairie; if she returns to Vineland to make the film she can see her daughter. Zuniga reveals that
Vond's funding has been cut -- not that this seems to have slowed his big-budget anti-drug campaign in
Vineland. Flashback to the breakup of Zuniga's marriage. Returning to Vegas, Frenesi and Zuniga dance. She
agrees to fly to Vineland, bringing Flash and their son Justin. There's a slight problem at the Vegas airport when
Frenesi refuses to cross a picket line, but the picketers overhear her pro-union rap as she argues with Flash, and