"Real Subversive Lit."?

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

Just a thought on the subversiveness of _V._:

First, a question.  What is the meaning of Vheissu?

Second, an answer/s.  "Vheissu," very close to the German "Wie heisse 
du?" means "How are you called?"  In idomatic German, this is "what's 
your name?"  But in idiomatic English, it is "HOW are you 
called?"--something like "how do I get in touch with you?"  
OR "how can I address you?"

The two meanings could imply very different sentiments: one, a request to 
know someone's name;  the other, a kind of secret password, a way to 
evoke the god/gods/goddess.  I favor the "goddess" reading.  And in both 
forms of the GErman expression.  For if Vheissu is representative of the 
development of the bomb, then "Vheissu" could express either a 
question--what do we call this mystery?  OR a prayer to whatever force 
is behind this discovery.  The Goddess was prominent in her 
manifestations as a destroyer, a destructive force that maintained an air 
of mystery.  Yes, she animates, but she also destroys.  

In _V._, women are almost always void of their powerful, even destructive 
sensibilities.  When they do appear as such, it is only in mutilated 
form--Vera, the Bad Priest--and always concurrent with some predominantly 
patriarchally motivated construct (dominion over the bondels, the Church, 
cybernetics.)  The destruction of the Goddess has seen/sees to it that 
women appear as only half as powerful as they might, and thus mainly as 
vulnerable, vain, domesticated, pathetic, crippled, naive. . . This other 
half has/is been appropriated in the creation of the bomb--mystery 
explored and exploited, and finally exhausted (later.)

Pynchon's "flatness" could be either representative of the notion of 
mystery exhausted, as later made more explicit in _Vineland_, or it could 
be that it is not flat at all, merely deplorably accurate, and thus 
problematizing history and narrative all at once.

Bonnie