59 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas PynchonVineland
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Zoyd Wheeler is a former hippie who lives near the Californian town of Vineland in 1984. One summer day, he wakes up and discovers his daughter, Prairie, has left a note indicating that a television station has inquired about his latest stunt. Each year, he must perform a public act of erratic behavior so that he can continue to collect his intellectual disability check from the government. A DEA agent named Hector Zuniga plans to arrest Zoyd at the site of his imminent stunt, which will be performed live on television. Calling Channel 86, Zoyd is told that the venue has been changed but he ignores this.
Zoyd gathers the materials for his annual display. He purchases women’s clothing, paying with a check which he (and the cashier) is certain will bounce. He purchases gasoline for his “elegant little imported-looking chain saw,” then drives to a bar named Log Jam (4). Inside, the former logger bar has been renovated. The music is different and the lumberjacks which once patronized the bar are now better dressed. The bar is run by Buster, a one-time bandmate of Zoyd, who explains that he needed to renovate to appeal to the wealthy patrons (mostly from Japan) who now visit the area to see the redwood trees which recently featured in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. This “gentrification” has drastically limited the number of venues where Zoyd can perform his annual stunt.
Van Meter, another of Zoyd’s old friends, calls the bar. He demands to know why Zoyd is at Log Jam. The television crew expects Zoyd to be at the Cucumber Lounge, where they plan to film his spectacle for the news. Van Meter lives behind the Cucumber Lounge in a 1960s-style commune of argumentative lovers. Zoyd heads to the Cucumber Lounge, or “the Cuke” for short. The bar is filled with television crews and federal agents. Van Meter introduces Zoyd to the owner of the Cuke, Ralph Wayvone Jr., as well as Hector Zuniga. Zoyd and Hector have a long and acrimonious relationship. Nevertheless, Hector invites Zoyd to lunch the following day. Cautiously, Zoyd agrees.
Zoyd prepares for his stunt. He will leap through one of the windows of the bar. Zoyd leaps through the glass—realizing that Hector has switched the real glass for “clear sheet candy” (12)—and the television crews film him being arrested by Hector. For many years, Zoyd remembers, Hector has tried to convince him to become a federal informant. Zoyd feels that he will inevitably flip in the future, but he is not sure whether this is the day when he will do so.
Chapter 2 Summary
Zoyd and his daughter, Prairie, sit down together to watch the television news coverage of Zoyd’s stunt. His annual “transfenestrative” stunts are part of the local traditions. Channel 86 hosts a panel of experts to compare and contrast this year’s stunt to Zoyd’s previous efforts. Zoyd and Prairie talk about their lack of money. Prairie references her boyfriend, a punk musician named Isaiah Two Four. Isaiah’s band is named Billy Barf and the Vomitones. Zoyd does not trust Isaiah.
At this point, Isaiah enters the room. Isaiah begins to talk excitedly about his business idea: He wants to open an amusement park that is based on violence. At this violence-themed park, families will be able to shoot guns at printed targets of cultural villains, traverse military obstacle courses, and play any number of violent video games. Isaiah wants Zoyd to co-sign a business loan, as his own parents refuse to do so because they are into “nonviolence.” Zoyd, suspecting that he does not have the credit score for a loan from the Bank of Vineland, instead suggests that he may have found a gig for Isaiah’s band. The owner of the Cuke, Wayvone, wants to hire a band for his daughter’s wedding. When Isaiah calls Wayvone, he assures Wayvone that Billy Barf and the Vomitones are Italian.
Zoyd remembers playing weddings with his own band, including at the weddings of Italian mobsters. He assures himself that Isaiah will be able to handle himself and then smokes a marijuana joint. As he smokes, he thinks about his troubling lunch date with Hector Zuniga.
Chapter 3 Summary
The first time Zoyd met Hector, he was still living in a house with his bandmates. Zoyd was a keyboard player in the Corvairs and they lived together in a decrepit bungalow near Gordita Beach. Hector visited often, offering money to the other members of the band in exchange for any incriminating information about the local drug dealers. Zoyd alone refused to take his money and become one of these “federal narcs.” At this time, Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California (by 1984, he is President of the United States). Local rumors linked Reagan to a pilot program to combat substance use in an aggressive, authoritarian manner.
At lunch with Hector, Zoyd learns that his ex-wife, Frenesi Gates, has gone missing and may be in trouble. Hector asks Zoyd to be on the lookout for Frenesi, offering him a monetary bonus for information if she reappears. Frenesi has been in witness protection for some time, Hector says, as she agreed to become an informant. Very recently, however, all her personnel files were deleted. She has vanished, with Hector hinting that Frenesi may have become involved in a secret underground operation run by the State. President Reagan’s “cutbacks in the federal budget and stuff” may have hit this operation and forced her into hiding (26).
Outside, police sirens are heard coming closer. Hector jumps up and runs for the kitchen, just as a team of men clad in camouflage jumpsuits storm into the restaurant. Their helmets are emblazoned with the word “NEVER” and they are searching for Hector. The leader of the NEVER troops, Dr. Dennis Deeply, gives his business card to Zoyd as the men chase Hector through the kitchen. Deeply claims that he treated the television-obsessed Hector as a patient at the National Endowment for Video Education and Rehabilitation (NEVER). The NEVER organization treats “Tubal abuse and other video-related disorders” (33).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Vineland opens with Zoyd Wheeler’s annual stunt. Each year, he dresses himself in an outlandish outfit and leaps through a glass window. At this stage of the novel, his ostensible motivation is to demonstrate that he warrants an intellectual disability check from the government. Later, however, the reality of the annual performance becomes clear: This is a requirement of a deal struck between Zoyd and Brock Vond, in which Zoyd is allowed to maintain custody of Prairie in exchange for these annual displays. These stunts allow the federal agents to track Zoyd and limit his ability to rebel against the system, making him dependent upon the same government that he claims to loathe. Zoyd is thus not betraying his hippie ideals by performing for welfare checks; he is doing so for the sake of his daughter, introducing the theme of The Importance of Family. After the stunt, Zoyd returns home and spends the evening with Prairie. Their warm domestic exchange illustrates their closeness, as they are willing to speak honestly and comfortably with each other.
Like so much in Vineland, the brutal truth about the structures of power is obfuscated by performative acts of mass media consumption and the alienation of modern life, which introduces the theme of The Search for Meaning. When Prairie mentions Isaiah, he appears from the hallway where he has seemingly been waiting the entire time. Isaiah’s entrance into the room (and the novel) is presented like a sitcom actor entering the frame. Outside of the scene, he does not seem to exist, alluding to a sitcom-like universe lacking in object permanence. The characters treat Isaiah’s entrance as normal; their minds, the novel suggests, are so gripped by mass media that they unconsciously operate according to the assumptions, patterns, and tropes of network television. Their lives become mirror images of the shows they watch; their behaviors are subtly and unknowingly influenced by what they see on the screen.
This pervasive alienation and superficiality is reinforced with the introduction of Hector, a DEA agent who is being treated for “television addiction.” Hector’s entire life is a performance, modeled on the police shows that he loves so much. Rather than operate according to his training or his morals, he acts like the police officers on television act. Isaiah’s awkward entrance and Hector’s television-influenced public persona thus illustrate the extent to which the lives of these characters are hollowed out and alienated. These brief flurries of entertainment are the closest they come to feeling actively engaged in society.
The opening chapters also introduce the novel’s third key theme, The Failures of Counterculture. Through his conversations with Hector, Zoyd reveals himself as one of the final holdouts of the 1960s counterculture era (See: Background). Unlike so many of his hippie friends, he has always refused to become an informant. Even when everyone around him was taking Hector’s money, he refused to divulge any information to the authorities, although he was happy to spend other people’s informant money. Hector develops a strange affection for the one man whom he could never turn. This is because Zoyd is presented as somewhat unique. He is, by 1984, a relic of a time that no longer exists. Zoyd is a novelty, rather than a threat, which endears him to Hector. This endearment, predicated on decades of adversarial conversations, is the closest thing Hector has to a friend.
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