Sex and the Single Bomb

[Andrew Dinn]

Penny Padgett writes:

> Don Larsson quotes Bonnie:

> >> "The point is that there is nothing seductive about an ICBM, nothing 
> >> sexy about thermonuclear weapons ... "

> and then goes on to remark:

> > ... TRP himself uses the imagery (sometimes straightforwardly,
> > sometimes ironically) as in the ref. in GR to Col Tibbets "tickling the 
> > clit of Miss Enola Gay" (which was named for Tibbets' mother--I don't 
> > *think* TRP knew that and wonder what it means if he did!).  And then 
> > there's the whole phallic rocket business that is so central to Blicero 
> > and Gottfried, if not Enzian.

> Indeed. Not to mention all those feelthy limericks about Doing It with
> the rocket or component hardware.

> "There was a young fellow named Ritter/Who slept with a guidance
> transmitter ..."  u.s.w. 

I was going to reply to Bonnie then hesitated but...

Pynchon does indeed use sexual imagery but I think the issue is more
one of power than sex - he mostly uses rape fantasies, and not usually
about raping but about being raped. And these sort of rape fantasies
are just as much about power as the real thing only they really
involve submitting to the rapist while retaining control. Consider,
for example, Minne Klaetsch and the Hubscrauber (or is it a huebsch
Raeuber?), the old lady who coyly pretends horror that he will keep
his rubber boots on while turning that great big hose on her. And, of
course, most of all consider Weissman and Enzian/Gottfried/Katje, the
former presented in many of the fantasised accounts of their affairs
as by far the weaker party, the most dependent. These fantasies
pretend to submit to, yet actually presume to control, abuse.

Perhaps a similar sort of attempt at control lies behind our `boyish'
obsession with rockets and devastation. After all, there's no more
vicious form of threat than being `buggered by the bomb' (I'm
deliberately bringing in male rape fears here - men don't talk about
such fear but it is there e.g. [to return to our scheduled subject]
Pynchon himself brings it up in the Roseland toilet scene). The more
you know about the horror, the more you are able to analyze, dissect,
weigh and rank the grades of techno-death the more you can believe
that you know the pitfalls, you might side-step the danger, you might
just be the one little pig whose bacon (or should I say whose arse)
gets saved.  And, naturally, the competition gets fierce when only one
little pig can be saved, when the reassurance can only come from
betraying others.

Perhaps, also, this explains why this is a boy's thing, not a girl's
thing. The power relations amongst boys are just so different to those
amongst girls. What gets checked out in the locker room is mereley one
symptom of this.


Andrew Dinn
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O alter Duft aus Maerchenzeit / Berauschest wieder meine Sinne
Ein naerrisch Heer aus Schelmerein / Durchschwirrt die leichte Luft