Vineland

Vineland (1990) is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, set in California in 1984. The novel explores the paranoia of the collapsing counterculture movement of the 1960s through the experiences of Zoyd Wheeler, a former hippie, and the past of his ex-wife wife, Frenesi. Their daughter Prairie meets her mother’s former lover, DL, and discovers the truth about her mother’s life. The novel explores such themes as The Failures of Counterculture, The Search for Meaning, and The Importance of Family. Notably, Vineland was the first novel by Pynchon after the extended hiatus following the publication of Gravity’s Rainbow.

This guide uses the 2000 Vintage edition of Vineland.

Content Warning: The source text contains brief references to child abuse, human trafficking and enslavement, substance misuse disorder, and brief allusions to Nazism and the Holocaust. The source text also displays anti-transgender biases and misgenders transgender women.

Plot Summary

Vineland begins in the eponymous California town in 1984. Zoyd Wheeler, a former hippie, wakes up and drives to his annual stunt performance. After some initial confusion about the location, he jumps through a window as television news crews film him. Zoyd does this each year, a necessary step to collect his intellectual disability check. At the event, Zoyd reunites with a federal agent named Hector Zuniga. For years, Hector has tried to recruit Zoyd as an informant. Unlike many of his hippie friends, Zoyd has always said no. When he has lunch with Hector the following day, he is told that his ex-wife, Frenesi, is missing. Hector warns that a fearsome federal agent named Brock Vond wants to find her.

Prairie is Zoyd's daughter. Since Frenesi ran away, Zoyd has raised Prairie as a single parent. Hector promises Prairie that he can tell her more about her mother, but Zoyd warns her not to involve herself with the television-addicted Hector. Prairie attends an Italian American wedding where her boyfriend's band, Billy Barf and the Vomitones, are performing. There, she meets a woman named DL. Many years ago, when Zoyd traveled to Hawaii to try to win Frenesi back, Zoyd helped a Japanese man named Takeshi. In return, Takeshi gave Zoyd his business card and offered to help him in a time of need. Zoyd gave this card to Prairie and now DL—Takeshi's partner—has come to make good on Takeshi's promise.

DL grew up in an abusive household. To cope with her violent father, she learned martial arts. She was soon a feared practitioner of many techniques that went beyond the standard teachings, turning her into a terrifying killing machine. DL became involved in radical politics as part of the counterculture movement of the 1960s. She met Frenesi when Frenesi was still an activist and a filmmaker. Together, they tried to bring about political change by shooting incidents of police brutality and oppression. DL and Frenesi also had a romantic relationship.

Their partnership ended, however, and DL blamed Brock Vond for corrupting Frenesi. Many years later, she was offered the chance to assassinate Vond on behalf of the mafia. In a farcical manner, the assassination went wrong, and she used her deadly technique on Takeshi. Feeling ashamed, she tried to help Takeshi recover at a health retreat run by warrior nuns named the Sisterhood of the Kunoichi Attentives. She and Takeshi were bound together, creating the partnership that helps Prairie take a journey into her past.

Through DL and Takeshi, Prairie learns more about her mother. Rather than the stories told to her by her father and her grandmother, however, the real version of Frenesi is starkly different from what she held to be true. She visits the archives of her mother's former film collective, 24fps, where she sees footage of her mother, DL, and many of the protests that they attended. At one of these protests, she sees her mother flirting with Brock Vond. At this time, a group of radical students gathered on campus to form the People's Republic of Rock and Roll. This short-lived and ambitious project was rigorously documented by the 24fps collective.

By this time, however, Frenesi and Vond were in a relationship. She was passing him film and information about the students, then following Vond's suggestions of how to undermine them from within. Eventually, the People's Republic of Rock and Roll collapsed under the pressure of paranoia and mistrust. Through Frenesi, Vond manipulated someone into killing a leader, Weed Atman, which brought the entire project to a close.

After the collapse of the People's Republic of Rock and Roll, Frenesi was taken into a reprogramming camp run by Vond. After a short time in this concentration camp, DL broke in and freed her. They traveled and lived together in hiding for a short while. When Frenesi eventually revealed that she had betrayed the movement, however, the friendship came to an end. A short time later, Frenesi met Zoyd. They married, and Prairie was born. Frenesi experienced postpartum depression but, just as she was resolving to make a life with her husband and daughter, Vond tracked her down. She ran away with him, consumed by guilt and regret. She eventually settled into a life as an official government informant, marrying a man named Flash and having a child named Justin.

At a big family reunion, Zoyd is reunited with Prairie. Frenesi also arrives, leading to a reunion between all three members of the family. Brock Vond attempts to intrude on the reunion and take Prairie away, but she refuses. When he is summoned back to base due to budget cuts, he tries to hijack a helicopter but crashes it and dies. Prairie returns to the family reunion.