double messages

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

Am I the only one getting two copies of everything?  If some of you are 
doing it for effect, then fine.  Maybe I deserve it.  But I suspect some 
flaw in the way my mail is coming to me from the list--some kind of 
eigenvalue or who knows?  I'm too tired for this.

One thing I want to suggest.  About _V._  I've been sitting in on Judith 
Chambers' Contemporary Lit course while she talks about the novel.  I 
have read a lot of her book, but not all.  I've learned of some of her 
thoughts on areas that had previously seemed important in only the 
vaguest of ways.  Have you read her book?  She talks about various bomb 
parables and these discussions serve to explain the nature of those 
spider monkeys and why Vheissu is so meaningful.  She pointed out "V.in 
Love" as another bomb parable and again, Hanna's experience with the 
trapezoid shape on the dish and the subsequent events -- also as bomb 
parable.  I pointed out another, one that also serves to help corroborate 
some of my thoughts on why Stencil flees Malta--the decision of Senor 
Mantissa to leave Boticelli's Venus, after all.  These two actions seems 
similarly motivated.  I still need to work on it, but I suspect something 
in the hollow Joshua tree as relevant, particularly considering the 
Isis/Osiris myth and the tree/column, virgin birth, etc. issues.

Chambers' book is called _Thomas Pynchon_, from Twayne Publishers. And 
some of this info on the parables is due out soon in a book called 
_Powerless Fictions_, I think from UF.. . ed. by Ricardo Miguel Alfonso.

It's very interesting stuff and helps to eradicate any thoughts of 
flatness, at least in my apprentice view.

Bonnie