Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Burns 14 March 1994
Vineland Response (2)
Pynchon’s characters idealize sex to some degree. For DL, a sexual encounter is her opportunity
to be in total touch with her body, to focus all of her physical skills, even though in one instance,
she does so in order to kill a man. Frenesi also idealizes sex in her relationship with Brock Vond,
“unable to stop gazing at [him]” (216). She “had to pretend that Brock was not really what he
looked like to everybody else…but that someplace…was the real Brock” (216). She falls so
heavily into this delusion, “so swept and helpless, she lean[s] in to wo whisper to him her heart’s
overflow” only to find him watching her, laughing.
Male bonding. Discuss Weed and Rex scene in Chapter 12.
Male bonding is important to Rex, but it is somewhat difficult for him because Weed and other
men will not always respond to him as he wishes them too. I think he feels a tension between
himself and other men because he cannot have sex with them. His Porsche substitutes for a
malefriend/lover in his life, because he is able to have rewarding intercourse with it (230), and
call it Bruno, a very masculine name. Having sex with an engine seems to point to larger issues
of difficulty in communication.
Possession. Discuss the idea of possession and how it relates to Frenesi. (268)
Issues of possesion are challenging with Frenesi, because of her mutability. No character is able
to extract a lasting commitment from her, and they therefore feel disconnected from her.
Possession of Frenesi is determined by Frenesi, which is to say that unless she decides someone
captivates her (as Brock apparently does), she is the powerholder in a given relationship. This
seems related to sex in some ways, because for her sex is a way of exerting her own power and
perhaps possession of other characters, while she is “captured” by Brock’s sexual nature.
Because he is able to offer her an intense experience, she responds by putting herself at his
mercy.