Boring holes

[Susan Danewitz]

A few comments on the boring piece (ha! love that duplicity!):

First, I found it interesting that these people were "gentled" by
the operation--usually brain _damage_ tends to roughen the emotions.
That these folks have gained serenity is a good advertisment.  But I'm 
more interested in the people who have been slowly covinced.  One 
by one, people are loosing their qualms abuot self-mutilation, at 
least enough to vote for the woman.  That's the really Pynchonesque
part of the story.  The fad that it will become...People
will do just about ANYTHING to gain a higher conciousness, you see... 

Secondly, another tie to Pynchon:  I felt almost the exact same
repulsion/tension, reading about the bone-heads, as I did reading
Esther's nose job.  I had to close read that passage, and it was
late at night, and even though I had read it plenty of times before,
by the end I was nearly foetal.  It was a vile, painful process
to have to read through--and I'd love it if someone would give me
a name for the literary technique.  That of hitting the "squeam" 
button, I mean.  Pynchon loves this technique.  I'm also thinking 
of a journey down a toilet in GR...

The passage I want to quote is Esther's evaluation of the 
experience of being mutilated under the plastic surgeon's knife: 

"It was almost a mystic experience.  What religion is it--one of the
Eastern ones--where the highest condition we can attain is that of
an object--a rock.  It was like that; I felt myself drifting down,
this delicious loss of Estherhood, becoming more and more a blob, no 
worries, traumas, nothing: only Being...."

Puts that serenity of the trepannists in a different light, least for me...

Luckily, I think Pynchon invents most of his really terrible fetishists.
Similar oddities may appear in the world, but I take comfort in the
fact that most of his are the creation of an overwhelming imagination.  :>

Take care all.  forgive the free spelling (like free jazz) but I'm
afraid the line's going to hang.

Susan