Easy. They just let us forget. Give us too much to process, fill up every minute, keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for, and though it kills me to say it, it's what rock and roll is becoming - just another way to claim our attention, so that beautiful certainty we had starts to fade, and after a while they have us convinced all over again that we really are going to die. And they've got us again.
Vineland is a novel written by Thomas Pynchon. Released in 1990, it tells of a DEA prosecutor trying to hunt down a family.
Characters[]
- Zoyd Wheeler - an aging hippie
- Prairie Wheeler - Zoyd's daughter
- Brock Vond - a despotic DEA prosecutor, possibly vampiric
- Frenesi Gates - Zoyd's ex-wife and Brock's former lover
- Hector Zuñiga - a DEA agent and common foil of Zoyd's who is extremely addicted to television
- Darryl Louise "DL" Chastain - a ninja assassin and a former friend of Frenesi's
- Takeshi Fumimota - DL's companion, a former kamikaze pilot
- Weed Atman - a Thanatoid and former figurehead within the PR3 movement. Partially based on the author.
- Ralph Wayvone, Sr. - the owner of Ralph Wayvone Enterprises, who is opposed to Brock Vond
- Ralph Wayvone, Jr. - the owner of the Cucumber Lounge and the son of Ralph Wayvone, Sr.
- Isaiah Two-Four - Prairie's ironically named boyfriend
- Roscoe - Brock Vond's companion
- Flash - Frenesi's new lover, a fellow snitch
- Justin - Frenesi's son
- Rex Snuvvle - a major member of the PR3 movement, effectively its leader
- Van Meter - Zoyd's partner in his crazed antics
- Desmond - the Wheelers' dog
- Dennis Deeply - a doctor working for NEVER
- Slide - one of Prairie's young friends
- Buster - one of Zoyd's fellow former hippies
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
A group of Americans in Northern California in 1984 are struggling with the consequences of their lives in the sixties, still run by the passions of those times -- sexual and political -- which have refused to die. Among them is Zoyd Wheeler who is preparing for his annual act of televised insanity (for which he receives a government stipend) when an unwelcome face appears from out of his past.
An old nemesis, federal prosecutor Brock Vond, storms into Vineland at the head of a heavily armed strike force. Soon Zoyd and his daughter, Prairie, go into hiding while Vond begins a relationship with Zoyd's ex-wife and uses Prairie as a pawn against the mother she never knew she had.
Part daytime drama, part political thriller, Vineland is a strange evocation of a twentieth-century America headed for a less than harmonic future.
Plot[]
Chapter 1[]
"Later than usual" in the Californian town of Vineland in 1984, the former hippie Zoyd Wheeler finds a note from his daughter Prairie telling him that a local television station has been acting about his antics. He then gets a call from the local TV show telling him that his "antics" have been rescheduled and that they are all at the Cucumber Lounge. Despite this, Zoyd decides to travel to the Log Jam in Del Norte. He dresses in drag and then breaks into the Log Jam - finding to his shock that it has been completely renovated. A fellow former hippie of his named Buster (who serves as the bartender) tells him that they have only recently renovated - with the entire town of Del Norte going through something similar ever since George Lucas used the town in Return of the Jedi's filming last year. Realizing that there's barely anything he can do here, Zoyd moves on to the Cucumber Lounge, a "notorious Vineland County roadhouse", and finds that his DEA agent nemesis Hector Zuñiga has arrived. Hector tells Zoyd to meet him for lunch tomorrow right before Zoyd jumps through a window. Hector then eats one of the shards of "glass" - revealing it is a sort of sugar-based false glass used in movies.
Chapter 2[]
Upon returning home, Zoyd finds his daughter Prairie watching a recording of his recent (effectively government-funded, as these antics give Zoyd a check from the government every year) antics. They then discuss Prairie's boyfriend Isaiah Two-Four before Isaiah reveals himself "out of another dimension, where he'd been watching from orbit". Isaiah tells Zoyd about his plan to make a sort of theme park for violence and asks if Zoyd will fund it. Zoyd suggests Isaiah to make a gig for his band Billy Barf and the Vomitones providing music for the sister of a remittance man he knows named Ray Wayvone, Jr. Isaiah briefly steps into the bathroom, allowing Zoyd to tell Prairie that he is not financing Isaiah's theme park. Isaiah steps back in to announce that he has gotten the gig.
Chapter 3[]
The next morning, after much tossing and turning throughout the previous night, Zoyd decides to make his appointment with Hector. While there, Hector reveals that Zoyd's ex-wife Frenesi's Witness Protection file has been lost in the shuffle of Reagan-era government cuts and that she might be coming to Vineland. Hector asks Zoyd to "be himself" for when Frenesi arrives and offers a large sum of money for this. When Zoyd refuses this, Hector tries to lecture him on how meaningless his life is (revealing in the process that Frenesi was housed somewhere in "a certain kind of world that civilians up on the surface... got no idea it's even there"). Once a waitress arrives with a check, Zoyd and Hector unintentionally lunge at her - right as crash helmet-wearing troopers descend on the diner they are meeting at. While Hector flees, Zoyd learns that they belong to an organization called "National Endowment for Video Education and Rehabilitation" (or NEVER) and that Hector was one of the most troubling cases of television addiction they had ever seen.
Chapter 4[]
During the 1960s, Zoyd met Freseni Gates and wedded her. Several decades later, Zoyd sets off from his home to find various people casting strange looks at him. Once he notices this, he calls Dr. Dennis Deeply of NEVER, worried that Hector is stalking him. Once he makes his way to an auto-conversion shop, he learns that federal agents have stamped into Vineland and soon learns that they have taken over his home. As such, he makes his way to the pizza place that Prairie works at. Before going there, he visits the wife of an actor (both of whom work at a lawn-care company) and gets a disguise. Once at the Bodhi Dharma Pizza Temple, Zoyd finds Hector stalking around and learns that the federal agents are being led by Brock Vond, who was responsible for putting Freseni in witness protection. He also learns that Hector was planning on filming a movie about his family as evidence of the evils of hippyism (and that Hector possibly accidentally brought Brock to Vineland) before Hector is carted away by NEVER troopers. With Hector out of the way and Isiah's band having arrived, Zoyd sends Prairie away with them to safety while he goes off on his own.
Chapter 5[]
Before leaving, Zoyd hands Prairie a business card for someone he met shortly before divorcing Freseni. Only a few months before their marriage ended, Zoyd travelled to Hawaii in search of his then-wife. While he discovered that Freseni had left almost immediately after arriving, he also discovered a small airline known as Kahuna Airlines and started to work for them as a musician. While doing so, he heard whispers of mysterious unidentified planes and encountered one on his first flight - which docked next to the plane and sent forth mysterious heavies to kidnap various passengers. Zoyd was able to save one passenger using his keyboard. This passenger, Takeshi Fumimota, gave Zoyd a business card that he would remember whenever he needed someone else the most.
Chapter 6[]
Despite being raised by a family of leftist, anti-corporate types, Frenesi reveled in the life of an informer during the Nixon administration. Shortly after leaving Zoyd, she also left Brock - leaving him a depressed, blubbering mess in the process, and shacked up with another informer named Fletcher (or Flash, as she calls him) and gave birth to a son named Justin. Shortly after this, Watergate ended the Nixon administration - and Frenesi's days of government-funded splendor along with it. Frenesi, Flash, and Justin have moved to a town in the Sun Belt, where they subsist off of government checks. One day, Flash returns home to reveal that several other informers have been removed from the government's computers. While Flash and Frenesi worry about them being killed or going rogue, Justin reveals that they might simply have been cut off due to Reaganomics. Shortly after this, Frenesi goes to cash her most recent check and finds that every place she goes to is closed. Once she finds a place that is actually open, she finds that her check has been cancelled - meaning that she has likely been cut off like all the other informers.
Chapter 7[]
Once they arrive at the Wayvone household (a somewhat opulent mansion owned by Ralph Wayvone, Sr. - the CEO of Ralph Wayvone Enterprises) to perform at the wedding of Gelsomina, Isiah and Billy Barf almost immediately run into trouble due to neither of them being Italian or having any knowledge of Italian culture. Shortly after Billy is nearly strangled by a guest, Gelsomina is able to provide them with a fake book. Meanwhile, Prairie analyzes her reflection before Takeshi's business card starts warbling out the Hawaii Five-O theme. This is noticed by one of the guests, who introduces her as a friend of Takeshi's named Darryl Louse (or DL) Chastain. Once she realizes that Prairie is Frenesi's daughter, DL reveals that she used to run with her but has to hide the fact that Frenesi willingly left with Brock while talking about him. After telling Isiah to tell Zoyd what she's doing, Prairie leaves with DL to meet with Takeshi.
Chapter 8[]
While Brock Vond lingers in the shadows, DL brings Prairie to a sort of ninja convent home to the multiracial ninja order Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives. Welcomed by the Head Ninjette and one Sister Rochelle, DL is able to get the extremely unruly and incompetent kitchens of the convent into order before looking through the computers of the convent to find anything she can on Frenesi. While doing this, she also learns from DL that she met Frenesi while motorcycling through California. DL then discusses her childhood in Japan with her violent soldier father and her introduction to the ninja arts and the Yakuza. Once Prairie asks how DL met Takeshi, DL screams almost in anguish.
Chapter 9[]
Many years previously, DL was contacted by Ralph Wayvone, Sr. - who wanted her to assassinate their shared enemy, Brock Vond. Though she was swayed by this, DL worried that this would shift her karma for the worse and fled. She was able to feign a normal life in Columbus, Ohio for some time before she was kidnapped by Japanese slavers and put into a human auction alongside several other women. She was quickly bought - by Ralph Wayvone, Sr. Ralph resumed his offer and set up an elaborate plan to kill Brock while dressing DL as a simulacra of the one thing that Brock desired the most - Frenesi - so that she could kill him with a Finger of Death move called the Vibrating Palm after sleeping with him.
Meanwhile, Takeshi and an "idiot savant" in bombs named Minoru were examining a factory owned by the company Chipco seemingly destroyed by a kaiju when a Chipco helicopter (disguised as a kaiju's foot) that brings them to a futurist city built by the company. The two of them travelled to Tokyo, where Takeshi was noticed by Brock Vond (visiting the city for a conference) and noticed the similarities between the two of them. As such, Brock sent Takeshi to the brothel where DL (blinded by coloured contact lenses) slept with him while assuming that he was Brock. Almost immediately after this coital act, DL was able to remove one of the lenses and realized what she did. She then ran out, as she had accidentally marked Takeshi for death with the Vibrating Palm.
Almost immediately after this, DL flew back to California and threw herself at the feet of the Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives - with whom she had a frayed relationship at the time. While DL wanted to stay with the Attentives, Sister Rochelle pushed that she must find the person she had used the Vibrating Palm on. Around the same time, Takeshi found that Minoru had gone missing and that he was dying from the Vibrating Palm. As such, he started chugging tranquilizers and (due to a note from one "Two-Ton Carmine") made his way to California - telling a stranger on the plane to California about his story while doing so. Once in California, Two-Ton Carmine was able to track DL down to the Kunoichi Attentives. Using a machine known as the Puncutron Machine, the Attentives were able to cure Takeshi of the Vibrating Palm - and then made DL be his companion as a form of karmic retribution.
Though Takeshi and DL did not particularly like each other, they went along with this. While driving through California in a rented Firebird, the two of them came across a restaurant called "Your Mama Eats" in the town of Shade Creek. Though both of them got bad vibes from the restaurant, they decided to visit the restaurant. While inside, Takeshi learned that someone was pursuing him and met a Thanatoid (a sort of wraithlike people who have personalities "extremely close to death" who make up most of Shade Creek's population) named Ortho Bob Dulang - who had heard about Takeshi's issue with the Vibrating Palm from the stranger on the plane. Takeshi decided to become a sort of karmic cleaner with DL (who was less than enthused with this) for the people of Shade Creek.
The two of them set up a "Karmology Clinic" in-between Vineland and Shade Creek. It was here that they made the acquaintance of the Vietnam veteran repo men Vato and Blood, who told DL about finding a car belonging to an old acquaintance of hers and Frenesi named Weed Atman who became a Thanatoid after being shot - something that Weed claimed was staged by Frenesi. While telling this to Prairie, DL and Takeshi finally tell her that her mother was working for Brock Vond as an independent contractor. Shortly after this, Prairie gets back to work in the kitchens - overseeing a debate over whether to throw out or eat some glowing "Variety Loaf" in the kitchen's freezers before deciding to leave the convent. Almost immediately after this, helicopters begin to descend on the convent - with Prairie, DL, and Takeshi only barely escaping through an underground tunnel.
Chapter 10[]
DL drives down to Los Angeles and arrives at the suite of their business - which is furnished with various pieces of 80s technological decor. While Prairie wants to track down her mother with some of the tech in the office, DL decides to show her old footage that Frenesi filmed while she ran with her. They meet with an old friend of DL's named Ditzah Pisk Feldman, who takes them to her film workshop and unveils the archives of 24fps - the film group that DL and Frenesi were in. This footage shows off the members of this organization along with the brutality of the era they lived in. It also shows Frenesi meeting Brock Vond outside a courthouse (possibly) for the first time. This film ends with foreshadowing of something big happening at College of the Surf in Trasero County.
Chapter 11[]
Bracketed between an ultra-conservative counties of California and a military base, the College of the Surf became a sort of beachhead for sixties counterculture despite being made as a training camp for Nixonian thought. While a monument to Tricky Dick was being built, someone lit a joint - which was quickly noticed by a Christian student. As police surrounded the school, a mathematics professor named Weed Atman (who had something of a celebrity around him) was followed around by students solely because he is the tallest person there - despite the fact that he had no idea what was going on. Weed meets with a grad student named Rex Snuvvle, who made plans to remove the establishment from the college. Shortly after this, the students discovered that the College was nothing more than a scam to make luxury real estate and cut the school off from the Union entirely - making it into a sovereign nation they called The People’s Republic of Rock and Roll. This quickly brought the media, and 24fps. While the students of the new Republic believed that Weed was a sort of frontman (largely due to Rex's machinations), Weed was largely unaware of this. Once she arrived at the People's Republic, Frenesi almost immediately took a notice to Weed Atman. While her friends in 24fps assumed that she was thinking of dating Weed, Frenesi was already seeing Brock - taking flights out to the state of Oklahoma to visit him. During one of these visits, Frenesi presented Brock with footage of the People's Republic and Brock revealed that he planned to destroy the Republic from the inside out - using Weed to do this.
Chapter 12[]
As the Thanatoids hold a Roast (a sort of party which is somehow not hampered by the extremely melancholic natures of the Thanatoids), Brock Vond's DARE troopers sweep across California and cause mass panic amongst the weed growing community. At the Roast, Weed Atman comes face to face with a dentist named Larry Elasmo who has seemingly been pursuing him for years.
Several months into the reign of the PR3 (as the People's Republic of Rock and Roll was dubbed by its inhabitants), Frenesi started to plant seeds of subterfuge into the ranks of the Republic by telling Rex that Weed was working for the FBI. Around the same time, Weed's wife Jinx began to worry that Frenesi had more than carnal ambitions for her husband while Frenesi noticed some mysterious voices speaking on Weed's face while sleeping next to him - learning many years later that these were "worms of song".
Shortly after this, Frenesi visited Brock and told him that she planned to film Weed's "confession". Brock revealed that Weed was actually unknowingly working for the FBI and pressed her to give Rex a gun. Though initially hesitant to do this, Frenesi snuck this gun into Rex's bag. A few days later, while the 24fps crew watched, an enraged Rex shot Weed - believing that he was knowingly working with the FBI. A day later, the federal government besieged the PR3, killing and arresting hundreds of people - with 24fps filming this devastation. The day after this, a federal convoy (with Frenesi in tow, having been essentially kidnapped on orders from Brock) left using a secret route known as the Federal Emergency Evacuation Route towards a top secret military base - with 24fps closely following. Using various ninja tricks, DL was able to sneak into the base and (after questioning some other people being held there) find Frenesi and sneak her out of the base. The two of them snuck to Mexico, where they argued and then split paths - with Frenesi being left behind in Las Suegras, where she met Zoyd.
Back in the present day, Ditzi is called by her sister Zipi - who tells her that Pluto is starting to become direct again (which Zipi suggests means that President Reagan will be reelected) and that a member of 24fps named Howie (who was present at the PR3 debacle) was arrested on seemingly fraudulent charges. DL then begins sweeping Ditzi's house for bugs and finds an old clunky unit. Assuming that this means that Brock is coming after the remaining members of 24fps, DL leaves with Prairie in the "Ninjamobile".
Chapter 13[]
Presumably right after the PR3 debacle, Brock and his Tonto-esque companion Roscoe visit Brock's newly-made PREP (Political Re-Eduction Program) camp and lustfully taunts Frenesi. Shortly after this, DL broke Frenesi out of the camp - absolutely devastating Brock and sending him into a frenzy which he sated by sleeping with women that reminded him of Frenesi. Meanwhile, Frenesi met Zoyd in a tavern and quickly fell in love with him - with Prairie being born (with Zoyd dropping acid during this birth) nearly a year later. Throughout the marriage, Frenesi had little love for Zoyd or even her daughter - who was menaced by post-partum depression during this. In the hopes that he could cheer her up, Zoyd's father Hubbell visits and recounts his early life. Some time after this, Brock tracked down Frenesi and - after quite literally running her off the road - restarted their affair.
Chapter 14[]
Upon discovering that Frenesi had a child, Brock was extremely shocked and decided to do something about it. As such, he had a literal monolith of marijuana planted in Zoyd's house and sent Hector to arrest him. Though Zoyd assumed that Brock had done this to get custody of Prairie, and sent her to live with Sasha, Brock came to him face-to-face in prison and revealed that he had done this to separate Prairie from Frenesi - telling Zoyd to leave with Prairie and go into hiding somewhere away from her. While travelling to Vineland, Zoyd briefly stopped in a commune surrounded by military bases and visited his old friend Mucho Maas - discovering that he had been "cured" of his drug addiction and discussing Hector with him. Once in Vineland, Zoyd met with his old friend Van Meter (whose dog was the mother of Zoyd's dog Desmond) and started looking for a home for himself and Prairie.
Chapter 15[]
DL and Takeshi travel to Los Angeles with Prairie - where she connects with some old friends by the name of Ché in a mall. Around the same time, the Thanatoids of the Vineland area are "awoken" as Wachet Auf plays. Meanwhile, as Brock's agents trounce through Vineland, some of them destroy Ditzah's house (and at least part of 24fps' archives) while DL, Prairie, and Takeshi ride into the town - having just missed seeing Hector as he roams through the town.
Several years previously, Hector was placed into one of NEVER's Tubaldetox facilities (presumably) shortly after his divorce. This did little for his Tube addiction - largely due to Dr. Deeply deciding on a radical new treatment option of allowing the patients as much TV as they could watch - and once he got out, Hector decided to make a movie of his own. He enlisted the help of two producers named Sid Liftoff and Ernie Triggerman to make an anti-drug movie based on Frenesi's life. Once he found out that Frenesi was hiding in Las Vegas, Hector set off to meet her and pitch his movie to her. While doing so, he let it slip that Brock's funding had been cut by the Reagan government and that he was in Vineland - where her daughter was. Though she didn't really believe in this, Frenesi decided to fly to Vineland with Justin and Flash - and found out that Vineland's airport was where Brock's forces had set up shop. Fortunately, Hector was able to sneak them out of the airport into a building known as the Vineland Palace. This leads Frenesi and Sasha to reunite - and dance instead of screaming at each other, much to Hector's surprise.
Meanwhile, Zoyd tries to make a plan to retake his house using weapons from a biker gang with Van Meter and Isiah while DL, Takeshi, and Prairie meet the Thanatoid Weed Atman - who recounts a dream about mysterious observers trying to reveal the truth of his murder. Shortly after this, Prairie makes her way to a family reunion - where she finally meets her mother for the first time in years, alongside her half-brother Justin. Flash and Zoyd also meet while Prairie sneaks out into the woods. It is here that Brock Vond notices her and tries to kidnap her by helicopter while lying about being her father. Fortunately, his legal standing to even be in Vineland is rescinded by this point and Roscoe pulls the helicopter away. While he plans to wipe out the entirety of the gathered Wheelers and Gates, he suddenly (and rather confusingly for him) finds himself in a car that quickly dies. He is found by Blood and Vato - who bring him to the gates of the Underworld, saying that his bones will be removed (likely to make him into a Thanatoid). Despite this, Prairie returns to the clearing - intending on being taken by Brock - but is found by her dog Desmond instead.
In-universe continuity[]
- Takeshi is one of the kamikaze pilots featured in Gravity's Rainbow.
- Mucho Maas from The Crying of Lot 49 reappears.
- The Traverses are also mentioned in Mason & Dixon and appear again in Against the Day.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mao II | Don DeLillo | 1991 | A novel with similar themes |
| Drop City | T.C. Boyle | 2003 | A novel with similar themes |
| Inherent Vice | Thomas Pynchon | 2009 | A novel by the same author with similar themes |
| Shibumi | Trevanian | 1979 | A novel with a somewhat similar plot |
| The Public Burning | Robert Coover | 1977 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
| Finale | Thomas Mallon | 2015 | Another novel about the Reagan administration |
| Our Gang | Philip Roth | 1971 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
| Shark | Will Self | 2014 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
| Duluth | Gore Vidal | 1983 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
| Nova Express | William S. Burroughs | 1964 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
| The Beans of Egypt, Maine | Carolyn Chute | 1985 | A novel with a vaguely similar setting |
Sources[]
- Wikipedia
- Goodreads
| Works of Thomas Pynchon | ||
|
Early works (Collected in Slow Learner) | ||