Vineland
Encyclopedia
Vineland is a 1990 novel by Thomas Pynchon
, a postmodern fiction set in California
, United States in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan
's re-election. Through flashbacks by its characters, who have lived the sixties in their youth, the story accounts for the free spirit of rebellion of that decade, and describes the traits of the fascist Nixonian repression and its War on drugs
that clashed with it; and it articulates the slide and transformation that occurred in American culture from the 1960s to the 1980s.
's Anderson Valley
(perhaps based upon Boonville
). Vineland may be a play on the word "Hollywood", a reference to the first Viking settlement in North America, Vinland
, or a reference to Andrey Vinelander, a character in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
. Still others contend that the title refers to Vineland, New Jersey
or a "Vinland the Good" mentioned in a Frank O'Hara
poem. However, the most obvious explanation is that the title is a reference to the area in which the novel is set, which is near California's grapevine-filled Wine Country.
, United States, in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan
's re-election. After a scene in which ex-hippie Zoyd Wheeler dives through a window, something he is required to do yearly in order to keep receiving mental disability checks, the action of the novel opens with the resurfacing of DEA agent Brock Vond, who (through a platoon of agents) forces Zoyd and his 14-year-old daughter Prairie out of their house. They hide from Brock, and from Hector Zuñiga (a drug-enforcement federale from Zoyd's past, who Zoyd suspects is in cahoots with Brock) with old friends of Zoyd's, who recount to the mystified Prairie the story of Brock's motivation for what he has done.
This hinges heavily on Frenesi Gates, Prairie's mother, who she has never met. In the '60s, during the height of the hippie era, the fictional College of the Surf seceded from the United States and became its own nation of hippies and dope smokers, called the People's Republic of Rock and Roll (PR³). Brock Vond, working for the DEA, intends to bring down PR³, and finds a willing accomplice in Frenesi. She is a member of 24fps, a militant film collective (other members of which are the people telling Prairie their story in the present day), that seeks to document the "fascists' " transgressions against freedom and the hippie ideals. Frenesi is uncontrollably attracted to Brock and the sex he provides, and ends up working as a double agent to bring about the killing of the de facto leader of PR³, Weed Atman (a math professor who accidentally became the subject of a cult of personality).
Her betrayal caused Frenesi to need to flee, and she has been living in witness protection with Brock's help up until the present day. Now she has disappeared. The membership of 24fps, Brock Vond, and Hector Zuñiga are all searching her out, for their various motives. The book's theme of the ubiquity of television (or the Tube) comes to a head when Hector, a Tube addict who has actually not been working with Brock, finds funding to create his pet project of a movie telling the story of the depraved sixties, with Frenesi Gates as the star, and the pomp and circumstance surrounding this big-money deal create a net of safety that allows Frenesi to come out of hiding. 24fps finds her and achieves their goal of allowing Prairie to meet her, at an enormous reunion of Frenesi's family. Weed Atman is also present at the reunion as one of many Thanatoids in the book—people who are in a state that is "like death, but different."
Brock, nearly omnipotent with DEA funds, finds Prairie with a surveillance helicopter, and tries to snatch her up in order to get to Frenesi, but while he is hovering above her on a ladder, the government abruptly cuts all his funding due to a loss of interest in funding the war on drugs because America has begun playing along willingly with the anti-drug ideal, and his helicopter pilot flies him away. Later he tries to come after Prairie and Frenesi again, but ends up stranded on a country road, where vengeful mechanics, acquaintances of 24fps, take him to cross the river of death and become a Thanatoid. The family reunion allows everyone to tie up all their loose ends together, and the book ends with Prairie looking into the beginning of a life no longer controlled by the fallout of the past.
) to a bizarre episode hinting at Godzilla
, Pynchon's "zaniness" pervades the novel. For example, Pynchon laces the book with Star Trek
references. He has his characters watch a sitcom named Say, Jim, about a starship all of whose officers "were black except for the Communications Officer, a freckled, redhead named Lieutenant O'Hara." The numerous references to films rigorously include the year of release in a manner unusual for a work of fiction. Several characters are Thanatoids, victims of karmic
imbalance and inhabitants of a strange state of being "like death, only different."
In addition, the novel is replete with female ninjas
, astrologers, marijuana
smokers, television
addicts, musical interludes (including the theme song of The Smurfs) and, naturally, metaphor
s drawn from Star Trek.
14 January 1990. Geddes, Dan. "Pynchon's Vineland: The War On Drugs and the Coming American Police-State", The Satirist Gordon, Andrew. "Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir". The Vineland Papers: Critical Takes on Pynchon's Novel, ed. Geoffrey Green, Donald J. Greiner, and Larry McCaffery (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1994): 167-78. Thoreen, David. “The President's Emergency War Powers And The Erosion Of Civil Liberties In Pynchon's Vineland”, Oklahoma City University Law Review 24, No. 3 (1999). John Diebold and Michael Goodwin: Babies of Wackiness, a "reader's guide to Vineland"
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, a postmodern fiction set in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, United States in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
's re-election. Through flashbacks by its characters, who have lived the sixties in their youth, the story accounts for the free spirit of rebellion of that decade, and describes the traits of the fascist Nixonian repression and its War on drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...
that clashed with it; and it articulates the slide and transformation that occurred in American culture from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Title and location
Vineland, the central locale of the novel, is a fictional small town in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
's Anderson Valley
Anderson Valley
Anderson Valley is a sparsely populated region in western Mendocino County in Northern California. Located approximately 100 miles north of San Francisco, the name "Anderson Valley" applies broadly to several rural, unincorporated communities in or near the alluvial terraces along Anderson Creek...
(perhaps based upon Boonville
Boonville, California
Boonville is a census-designated place in Mendocino County, California. It is located southwest of Ukiah, at an elevation of 381 feet . The population was 1,035 at the 2010 census.-History:...
). Vineland may be a play on the word "Hollywood", a reference to the first Viking settlement in North America, Vinland
Vinland
Vinland was the name given to an area of North America by the Norsemen, about the year 1000 CE.There is a consensus among scholars that the Vikings reached North America approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus...
, or a reference to Andrey Vinelander, a character in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969.Ada began to materialize in 1959, when Nabokov was flirting with two projects: "The Texture of Time" and "Letters from Terra." In 1965, he began to see a link between the two ideas, finally composing a unified novel...
. Still others contend that the title refers to Vineland, New Jersey
Vineland, New Jersey
Vineland is a city in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 60,724...
or a "Vinland the Good" mentioned in a Frank O'Hara
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...
poem. However, the most obvious explanation is that the title is a reference to the area in which the novel is set, which is near California's grapevine-filled Wine Country.
Plot
The story is set in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, United States, in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
's re-election. After a scene in which ex-hippie Zoyd Wheeler dives through a window, something he is required to do yearly in order to keep receiving mental disability checks, the action of the novel opens with the resurfacing of DEA agent Brock Vond, who (through a platoon of agents) forces Zoyd and his 14-year-old daughter Prairie out of their house. They hide from Brock, and from Hector Zuñiga (a drug-enforcement federale from Zoyd's past, who Zoyd suspects is in cahoots with Brock) with old friends of Zoyd's, who recount to the mystified Prairie the story of Brock's motivation for what he has done.
This hinges heavily on Frenesi Gates, Prairie's mother, who she has never met. In the '60s, during the height of the hippie era, the fictional College of the Surf seceded from the United States and became its own nation of hippies and dope smokers, called the People's Republic of Rock and Roll (PR³). Brock Vond, working for the DEA, intends to bring down PR³, and finds a willing accomplice in Frenesi. She is a member of 24fps, a militant film collective (other members of which are the people telling Prairie their story in the present day), that seeks to document the "fascists' " transgressions against freedom and the hippie ideals. Frenesi is uncontrollably attracted to Brock and the sex he provides, and ends up working as a double agent to bring about the killing of the de facto leader of PR³, Weed Atman (a math professor who accidentally became the subject of a cult of personality).
Her betrayal caused Frenesi to need to flee, and she has been living in witness protection with Brock's help up until the present day. Now she has disappeared. The membership of 24fps, Brock Vond, and Hector Zuñiga are all searching her out, for their various motives. The book's theme of the ubiquity of television (or the Tube) comes to a head when Hector, a Tube addict who has actually not been working with Brock, finds funding to create his pet project of a movie telling the story of the depraved sixties, with Frenesi Gates as the star, and the pomp and circumstance surrounding this big-money deal create a net of safety that allows Frenesi to come out of hiding. 24fps finds her and achieves their goal of allowing Prairie to meet her, at an enormous reunion of Frenesi's family. Weed Atman is also present at the reunion as one of many Thanatoids in the book—people who are in a state that is "like death, but different."
Brock, nearly omnipotent with DEA funds, finds Prairie with a surveillance helicopter, and tries to snatch her up in order to get to Frenesi, but while he is hovering above her on a ladder, the government abruptly cuts all his funding due to a loss of interest in funding the war on drugs because America has begun playing along willingly with the anti-drug ideal, and his helicopter pilot flies him away. Later he tries to come after Prairie and Frenesi again, but ends up stranded on a country road, where vengeful mechanics, acquaintances of 24fps, take him to cross the river of death and become a Thanatoid. The family reunion allows everyone to tie up all their loose ends together, and the book ends with Prairie looking into the beginning of a life no longer controlled by the fallout of the past.
Technique
Throughout the novel, Pynchon's technique is recognizable. From a cameo of Mucho Maas (from The Crying of Lot 49The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero...
) to a bizarre episode hinting at Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
, Pynchon's "zaniness" pervades the novel. For example, Pynchon laces the book with Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
references. He has his characters watch a sitcom named Say, Jim, about a starship all of whose officers "were black except for the Communications Officer, a freckled, redhead named Lieutenant O'Hara." The numerous references to films rigorously include the year of release in a manner unusual for a work of fiction. Several characters are Thanatoids, victims of karmic
Karma
Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....
imbalance and inhabitants of a strange state of being "like death, only different."
In addition, the novel is replete with female ninjas
Kunoichi
is the term for a female ninja or practitioner of ninjutsu .-Etymology:The term is thought to derive from the names of characters that resemble the three strokes in the kanji character for ; said in the order they are written: ku - no - ichi...
, astrologers, marijuana
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
smokers, television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
addicts, musical interludes (including the theme song of The Smurfs) and, naturally, metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
s drawn from Star Trek.
Further reading
Pynchon, Thomas R. Vineland. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990). Rushdie, Salman. "Still Crazy After All Those Years", The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
14 January 1990. Geddes, Dan. "Pynchon's Vineland: The War On Drugs and the Coming American Police-State", The Satirist Gordon, Andrew. "Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir". The Vineland Papers: Critical Takes on Pynchon's Novel, ed. Geoffrey Green, Donald J. Greiner, and Larry McCaffery (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1994): 167-78. Thoreen, David. “The President's Emergency War Powers And The Erosion Of Civil Liberties In Pynchon's Vineland”, Oklahoma City University Law Review 24, No. 3 (1999). John Diebold and Michael Goodwin: Babies of Wackiness, a "reader's guide to Vineland"