Chapter 8

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page numbers refer to editions with 369 pages, where the story begins on page 1. Not sure if there are other editions with variant pagination. Please let us know otherwise.

Page 116

Cora Smith
Also from The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Page 119

Charlie the fucking Tuna
Charlie the Tuna is a cartoon character and mascot for StarKist Tuna. You can see his "designer shades" and "beret" here.

single up all lines
This is a special phrase for Pynchon. It is used in V. (pp.11 and 438), The Crying of Lot 49 (p.31), Gravity's Rainbow (p.489), Mason & Dixon (pp.258 and 260), and it is the very first sentence of Against the Day. Apparently, Vineland is the only novel without this phrase.

See here for a longer note on the significance of this phrase.

Page 121

yet another Hitler documentary
The "another" implies that they had watched other Hitler documentaries - the most famous being Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. The description of the Nixon rally that Doc is watching has similarities to Triumph.

Note that Triumph of the Will was a favorite film of G. Gordon Liddy, a man responsible for the erruption of "Cop" shows on TV and the emergent "War on Drugs" in the early 70's.

Page 122

fuck Spiro, too!
Spiro Agnew was Nixon's Vice President.

Anybody know the dog's name?
Yes. Its name was Checkers.

the P-DIDdies
A (deliberately) lame joke. Sean Combs is a rapper, producer, and entrepreneur whose stage names include Diddy, Puff Daddy, and P. Diddy.