Reader's Guide to Vineland

p. 366 Prairie and Weed "soon to become an item" This is the real happy ending, suggesting that young
kids may seek out the truth about the Sixties. (And not just the clothes!)
p. 366 "Prairie would show him secrets of pachinko..." But how did she learn them? From DL?
p. 367 "the Traverse-Becker wingding" Nice image, suggesting the continuity of the Left -- although
making it a picnic is surely some dark irony. (At least it's not a dinner party.)
p. 367 "Octomaniacs" = again, players of crazy eights.
p. 367 "the Mother situation" Nice cinematic touch, superimposing Frenesi and the Mother of Doom
(the spade queen).
p. 367 "with Sasha was a woman about forty, who had been a girl in a movie..." The reunion of Prairie
and Frenesi, which has motivated Prairie, and haunted Frenesi, throughout most of the book, is tossed off
distressingly quickly, but with at least this one great line.
p. 367 "Commere lemme check those dimples, yes there, they are..." Sasha's agonizing grandma act is
way out of character. We hope! Still, "it's her way of trying to help" (p. 368).
p. 368 You'd think Pynchon would devote a little more ink to the reunion of Frenesi and Prairie, but in fact
Frenesi seems to be in the process of fading out here (much as Vond will do in a few pages).
p. 369 "pasta dishes and grilled tofu contributed by younger elements" Hello, Becker/Traverse
yuppies!
p. 369 "Secret retributions are always restoring the level..." This marvelous quote from Emerson is
deeply optimistic, and goes a long way toward buying off the Happy Ending. Contrasts nicely with Lombroso's
"misoneism," the negative feedback loop by which society resists change.
p. 369 "Ask Crocker 'Bud' Scantling" The Happy Ending continues, as we learn of Crocker 'Bud'
Scantling's karmic payoff under the wheels of a chip truck.
p. 370 "Take care of your dead, or they'll take care of you." Confirmation of what the Thanatoids
really are (see p. 325). Also a nice restatement of Santayana's famous quote about "Those who fail to learn from
history are doomed to repeat it (or retake the course)."
p. 370 "Say, Jim" The title of this made-up half-hour sitcom (a black version of Star Trek) is a reference
both to Bones' habitual conversational opening to Captain James Kirk, and to Afro-American slang in which
"Jim" is an all-purpose (and generally negative, being short for "Jim Crow") form of address. This is also
another digital gag (white becoming black = zero becoming one).
p. 370 "Zoyd and Flash went off looking for beer" Flash surfaces. No point, really, except for the
overall reconciliation Pynchon is forcing on the book.
p. 370 "Robert Musil" An Austrian novelist (1880-1942), whose Proustian style was marked by subtle
psychological analysis. His works include Young Torless and The Man Without Qualities.
p. 371 "...talking back to the tube..." The Beckers and Traverses are politically hip, shown by their
talking back, and their suspicion that the "prefascist twilight" is really just "the light...coming from millions of
Tubes all showing the same bright colored shadows..." TV as the true opiate of the masses -- or, as the NY
commies used to say, "de messes."
p. 372 Zoyd feels sorry for Flash, the "unfortunate sucker" who's still with Frenesi; he sees "the need behind
the desperado lamps" (eyes). Nice phrase, nice rendition of the healing power of time and distance, and a sweet
way to take leave of Zoyd, who seems to have found some peaceful place to rest -- at least for the moment.
p. 373 "Minute the tube got hold of you folks, that was it..." The kid (who speaks for Pynchon, of
course) is right. It's funny how so few of us saw the future, fought the Tube. McLuhan was right too, but we
only thought we knew what he was talking about.
p. 373 "gold-handled chainsaw" Sheriff Willis Chunko's celebrated anti-pot weapon takes us full circle
from/to Zoyd's ladylike purse-sized model in Chapter 1.
p. 373 "monster Mopars dialed and eager" Mopar = the parts division of Chrysler Motors = (here)
engines. Dialed = souped up. This is at least the second "dialed" reference in Vineland. It's hot-rod talk, and
means more or less the same as the now old-fashioned "blue-printed." The dials refer to a machinist's dial
indicators, used to bring once-stock engines into more-than-perfect condition and tune.
p. 374 "speeding after moonset" Like in Thunder Road [1958], the great Robert Mitchum bootlegging
thriller.
p. 374 "quaquaversal beard" Quaquaversal is a geological term meaning "turned or pointing in every