I need to re-read it but it’s surprisingly not so intimidating - the way it’s written seems kind of daunting at first (it’s written as a parody of the kind of 17th / 18th Century novel) but it’s probably his best in terms of the sheer joy of storytelling. It takes you on a proper sprawling journey that goes to some truly surreal places, but it’s all rooted in one of the most tender depictions of a lifelong friendship I’ve ever seen
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My dad absolutely inhales books, including The Big Tough Ones, and he struggled with Gravity’s Rainbow.
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Chapter 3:
Thanks to the film Hector is very clearly Benicio Del Toro and, of course, Zoyd is Di Caprio even though I didn’t hugely like him in the role. Anyway, a great chapter for imagery (Hector framed in the doorway and that recalled convoy is so nice) and for headfuckery: we get a load of lore dropped and then by the end it’s put into question. Absolutely love the surreal idea of Tubal Abuse too.
I can’t wait for you to see where this goes because that’s where One Battle completely diverges
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Also I emailed in the Mapping the Zone podcast during their Vineland season and sent them my recommendations for records I like listening to when reading this
“The Expanding Universe” by Laurie Spiegel (pioneering 'electronic music emerging out of the countercultural art experiments going on at Bell Laboratories in the '70s – the liner notes are really interesting, outlining Spiegel’s philosophy around the computer as a folk instrument).
“Rayon Hula” by Mike Cooper (too fascinating a character to get into in too much detail, Mike Cooper’s musical career spans across seven decades – and this album in particular is kind of a haunted ambient music take on Polynesian / Hawaiian music, not dissimilar to what the Caretaker does with old ballroom records).
“When the Roses Come Again” by Daniel Bachman (I was introduced to this guy through a monthly album listening club I go to, and this sounds to me like those towering pine trees on the first edition cover of ‘Vineland’. American folk guitar playing blended with noise and drone).
“Last American Hero” by James Ferraro (this is basically the concept of a Thanatoid distilled down to music).
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Nice. Was listening to the new Downtown Boys while reading just now and it felt a good fit.
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Chapter 4 done in various stages, some to Downtown Boys, some to Laura Spiegel, some to the noise of the bus.
Obviously my main thought is, dude, you did not just hand your 14 year old daughter over to a 17 year old boyfriend and his punk band to keep her safe?! So far the book still feels quite strongly to be the plot of OBAA but yes, clearly also a more fantastic version of our world than the film’s more grounded one.
Chapter 5:
Well that was good. Was going to say it was surreal but I guess it’s merely in the realm of a tall tale. Actually what I thought of most was the one bit if Generation X I really liked which was the tale within the tale of the Boy with the Hummingbird Eyes (?). This isn’t quite a tale within a tale but it also doesn’t feel entirely as ‘real’ as the contemporary bit. Either way, lovely stuff.
Chapter 6:
Really interesting chapter this although I started it when I was a bit too tired so I got a little lost around which generation of Frenesi’s family I was reading about. There’s a lot in this chapter about ‘cashing cheques’ (well, checks) and it reminds me I don’t know if I ever found out if cheques are just treated differently in the States, or the same sort of practice existed here in the UK, e.g. a private citizen taking a cheque made to you and being able to cash it later and thus giving you the money out of their own pocket.
In the years when I had a cheque book I seem to recall there was a sort of cross line bit you could sign to allow someone else to cash it on your behalf but not sure about stuff from govt etc.
Anyway, think my favourite bit was reminiscing about her father noting the credits on shows and movies and talking shit about the people, particularly the dirty scabs! Also when something bloody is described as ‘Jasonic’.
Chapter 7:
A lot of laughs in this chapter. As a Sopranos fan Two-Ton Carmine was Paulie Walnuts and the whole thing was so great to read. Also interesting how cool Isiah is even though I don’t really want to like him because of the ick of his relationship with Prarie. Loved how the sci-fi ness came back. I’m usually a bit hmm on this kind of magical realistm/WTF stuff but I loved it here. What is going on with DL? It’s not clear but it feels like we’re kind of in Infinite Jest territory with the ‘it’s our world but actually it’s not really our world we’re in’.
One interesting thing is both times the Uzi submachine gun has come up, Pynchon makes not of it being an Israeli-developed weapon, something I did know but had long since forgotten. An odd thing (to my mind) to mention but maybe in the 80s it was still seen as exotic before 80s action films had them everywhere and TP is writing faithfully to his period?
It’s interesting that you bring up Infinite Jest because DFW was quite cold on this novel, and said that it felt like Pynchon had just been smoking weed and watching Star Trek between 1973 and 1990. Which baffles me a bit because I think there’s a HUGE debt that Infinite Jest owes to this book tonally and thematically (the whole ‘Tubal Abuse’ thing especially)
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Wouldn’t surprise me if the Uzi reference is a deliberate kind of nudge, just cause iirc Bleeding Edge goes quite hard into Israeli military / intelligence around the period in the 80s this one is set in (PROMIS software, stuff like that)
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Underrated thing I love about this is that every single time a film is mentioned it has the release year next to it in brackets
Just a daft little bit, especially in dialogue
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Yes! Love that release date thing. Felt especially funny for RotJ given how few Lucas films there were and the time period.
Oh man PROMIS. Maybe I’ll have to listen to the Octopus again if I can steel myself.
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Keep meaning to relisten myself. I got a bit lost when it was coming out, a more continuous listen might be better!
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loving the double act of this thread so far
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Chapter 8:
Struggled a bit with this one. Another chapter telling a character’s life but I found I kept getting bogged down. It was only when they talked about DL’s family being ‘shipped back’ I realised thry must be on an army base in Japan, and do much more that preceded made sense. I’m not sure if I just missed a very obvious line about this or Pynchon approached it obliquely by maybe just mentioning a Japanese district as he has done in Chapter 9 (halfway through that) so I just parsed it as some place in California. Anyway, not a great chapter: I enjoyed it but nothing really stood out strongly.
Edit: shout out to Laurie Spiegel’s Kepler’s Harmony of the World’s as the standout track on the album and creepy as fuck.
8 pages into The Crying of Lot 49 and his writing style sure is something, innit?
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EDIT: Miscounted and that was chapter 9!
Wow, chapter 9 is a monster, not just long but a LOT of different threads. I liked the meat of it but had some issues which were around the hugely casual way TP approaches the sale of women into slavery. It feels like the novel just wants to use it as a slightly odd plot point but it stays with you long after the book seems to have washed its hands, eager to move to the next thing. DL never even asks Ralph Wayvone about the fact he’s there to buy her? I assume the point is that he has come specifically for that but it almost read like he’d been there before, and really he should be blowing the whistle on it.
Anyway, Takeshi’s story is really excellent. GODZILLA!!! I have no idea if this is an aside or it’ll come up later. Absolutely loved the casual use of it in his story. I’m also left wondering about when he first meets and gives Zoyd his card. Note in that set Zoyd played the theme to Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956) -ooh! But the point is that it’s presumably 1968ish at this time but Takeshi’s story seems to be in a later time period by maybe a decade (1978 is mentioned specifically a bit later) so I’m now wondering if the whole UFO thing with the plane back in Chapter 5 or whatever will turn out to be time-travel related, or it’s just that we don’t really ever learn about why Takeshi was out there looking at the footprint of Godzilla?
There’s obviously a background here of stuff that was firmly in OBAA but we have all this extra stuff going on. I am not really sure I enjoy Blood and Vato’s stuff. I only just realised they were in an earlier chapter (or Blood was) but I didn’t recall. There’s some weird dialogue bits where Blood is talking to Vato but says Blood as if it’s Vato talking and I can’t work out if that’s something about Blood or something that went weird with the printing.
Finally: intrigued by the speech affectations, in that a lot of characters will be listed as missing the starts of words, e.g. 'at instead of that and 'th instead of with. I can’t in my head ‘hear’ people talking like that. Is that a Vineland-world thing? Something I’m just missing about Californian accents or not interpreting correctly?
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@1101010 ! Advice please!
I want to join in on the fun but I have Vineland on my kindle and I’ve just been given a big stack of paper books as leaving gifts. My next Kindle book therefore will probably only get read in the night time and sporadically as it shares headspace with other stuff.
Is Vineland, in your opinion, a book that could be enjoyed under these conditions or should I park it for now?
Hmm, I definitely didn’t get as much out of the chapters I read when my eyelids were drooping but equally it is quite episodic. Each chapter seems to be about the history of one character or idea, or if they do multiples you can sense the gear-shift and pause. So unless your night time reading is also only about 15 mins I’d say it will work well for you in this context.
That said, I saw One Battle After Another and while it’s not a direct adaptation there’s a kind of framework it game that has helped me to keep abreast of stuff maybe.
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