GRGR(7) Discussion Opener

ckaratnytsky at nypl.org ckaratnytsky at nypl.org
Fri Dec 13 12:23:20 CST 1996


     
     Owwwww!  Joh-ohnnn!  That ra-zor blade just cut my *tongue*!  Wait a 
     minute.  Put your leg on my shoulder, a-and...
     
     Oh.  He-lloooo.  Chris.  Get up, Chris.  Get *up*.
     
     Uh, ah...  A-hem.
     
     Friends --
     
     GRGR(7) is being brought to you by Jumpin' John Mascaro and Crispy 
     Chris Karatnytsky, who each wanted to tackle this episode So Much that 
     they decided to do it together.  (To be truthful, they've been a 
     little concerned that this episode warms their Ovens sooo well, but 
     that's fodder for more than just a GRGR, nicht wahr, Liebchen?)
     
     GRGR(7), our only scheduled discussion for December, runs from pages 
     92 to 113.  It begins, "In silence, hidden from her, the camera 
     follows..." and ends "...with an old tarnished silver crown."
     
     As a bonus, John Mascaro will be posting an 11-page chunk of his 
     dissertation, which deals with this section.
     
     Discussion for GRGR(8), pages 114 - 136, opens after the New Year, on 
     10 January 1997.  The text begins, "It was very early morning," and 
     ends "...whatever seas you have crossed, the way home..."  Presumably, 
     Andrew will have made contact by then and he (or Joe Varo) will either 
     take the matches away from us kids and restart the fire himself, or 
     will let us burn down the house trying to light it ourselves.
     
     The full itinerary for the Gwoup Weed can be found at
     
     www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~andrew/pynchon-group-read.html
     
     
     Happy Holidays to all, whatever seas you cross.
     
     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     
     p.92
     
     1.)  "In silence, hidden from her, the camera follows as she moves 
     deliberately nowhere longlegged about the rooms[...]"
     
     Note the ambiguous point of view of this opening.  (It takes a few 
     paragraphs for the reader to be able to determine who's watching who, 
     for example.)  This episode is filled with abrupt shifts in points 
     of view, a-and the narrative technique used here recalls the series of 
     vignettes that comprise Chapter 3 of V.  There has been some 
     discussion recently of TRP's "filmic" style with regard to the close 
     of the previous episode.  Anyone care to make any further remarks?  
     What's happening here, plotwise?  Where are we? 
     
     2.)  "[...]this rainiest day in recent memory[...]"
     
     The atmosphere of gray, dreary rain (excepting the scene on Mauritius) 
     forms a leitmotif in this episode and amplifies the dark sexuality of 
     the Blicero/Gottfried/Katje menage.  It may  also be a compliment to the 
     dank, dark earth in which Osbie grows his special mushrooms (the 
     presence of which, off at the edge of the frame throughout the entire 
     episode, might well account for the surrealistic, convoluted, 
     self-refracting nature of the narrative).  The rainy weather may also 
     play a role in the episode's mystical, mandala-like, fourfold nature: 
     Water to go with Earth (Osbie's mushrooms), Fire (the Oven), and Air 
     (the pattern of references to air raids, rocket launchings, landings, 
     etc).  (This would also fit in with the four humors, which were  
     discussed recently.)
     
     p. 93
     
     3.)  "But she happens to've glanced in just at the instant Osbie 
     opened the echoing oven."
     
     The "echoing oven" resonates for Katje with memories of her sexual 
     slavery with Gottfried under the control of Captain Weissmann, who 
     makes his first appearance in the novel as Dominus Blicero.  Who is 
     Weissmann/Blicero? Can someone recount his previous incarnation, his 
     appearance in (and another link to) V.?  In this section, Blicero is 
     repeatedly referred to as "The Captain."  Given that the "other" 
     Captain, Prentice, makes an appearance later in the episode, of what 
     significance is this?
     
     In terms of narrative shift, how long ago did the events happen 
     that Katje recalls?
     
     p. 94
     
     4.) "She has posed before the mirrors too often today[...]  At the 
     images she sees in the mirror, Katje also feels a cameraman's 
     pleasure[...]"
     
     Posed before a mirror/posed before a camera/posed behind a camera:  
     what's the same/different about these things?  This doubling trope 
     triggers the first major scene shift into Katje's flashback.     
     
     p. 95
     
     5.)  " 'Perhaps,' he tells her, 'I will cut your hair.'  He smiles at 
     Gottfried.  'Perhaps I'll have him grow his.' "
     
     Blicero's little cross-gendering, twinning game:  Katje/Gottfried are 
     explicitly rendered as doppelgangers in the episode.  What purpose 
     does this serve, and how does it complicate the ongoing thread of 
     discussions re TRP's attitudes towards women, homosexuals, etc?     
     (Blicero, of course, transcends all categories except Power and 
     Dominion.)       
     
     p. 97  
     
     6.)  "Want the Change," Rilke said, "O be inspired by the Flame!"
     
     What is "the Change" that Blicero wants -- the Change he knows Katje 
     will reject?  Is it to be transfigured into the realm of Lord Dominus 
     Blicero, a realm where human life is reduced to the naked workings of 
     power transactions?  That can't be what Rilke meant (any Rilkeans out 
     there?), but what else could it mean to Blicero?     
     
     7.)  "[...]a British raid is the one prohibited shape of all possible 
     pushes from behind, into the Oven's iron and final summer.  It will 
     come, it will, his Destiny...not that way -- but it will come...."  
     [ellipses TRP]
     
     Anyone care to tackle the multiple uses of the oven/Oven/ofen?  Why is 
     the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel invoked, either as part of Blicero's 
     disturbing sexual scenario, or as larger symbol?  What *is* Blicero's 
     Destiny?  A-and, there's that iron again!
     
     p.98
     
     8.)  "Und nicht einmal sein Schritt klingt aus dem tonlosen Los..."  
     "And not once does his step ring from the soundless Destiny..."  [all 
     ellipses TRP]
     
     The twinning of the Rilke line -- translation as doppelganger?     
     
     p. 99
     
     9.)  "But every true god must be both creator and destroyer.  Brought 
     up in a Christian ambiance, this was difficult for him to see until 
     his journey to the Sudwest: until his own African conquest."
     
     Nice fat dualism here: the symmetry of creation and destruction.  Why 
     does Blicero's Christian upbringing make this hard to see?  It works 
     out quite nicely further on (pp. 110-111) in the scene where the 
     Dodo's extinction is recast in terms of Christian salvation.

     p.100
     
     10.)  "Tonight he feels the potency of every word: words are only an 
     eye-twitch away from the things they stand for."
     
     Yet another way to think of what delta-t might mean.  Here, it's the 
     inexpressible gap between reality and the language that maps it, but is 
     this Blicero's idea of language, or the narrator's?  (The p.o.v. gets 
     perfectly ambiguous after the colon in the sentence.)  This notion 
     continues for rest of the paragraph:  Doesn't "the face -- the mask" 
     have the same relationship as the word and what it stands for?  Aren't 
     they separated by the same eye-twitch, the same delta-t?  And for that 
     matter, getting back to a point raised in #3 above, what's the 
     relationship between this Blicero/Weissmann and the one last 
     encountered in V.?  Is this Weissmann only an eye-twitch away from that 
     one?  (Given that Weissmann's *first* appearance in GR is a 
     *re*appearance embeds repetition into the text in still another 
     dimension.)
     
     11.)  "God is creator and destroyer, sun and darkness, all sets of 
     opposites brought together, including black and white, male and female."
     
     This line develops the notion of the twinning of opposed forces, and 
     provides, by the way, one of those moments when the text clearly seems 
     to be describing its own operations simultaneously with whatever else 
     it's referring to.  (This list could have easily included "gravity" 
     and "rainbow," for example).
     
     p. 100-101
     
     12.)  "Bodenplatte"  "Mandala"  "In Hoc Signo Vinces" 
     
     A knotting-into:  An amalgam of technical and religious imagery has 
     been created here -- a fusing, also incorporating the Cross (see #18 
     below), of the preceding ideas of symmetry, repetition, opposition, 
     identity, divinity, etc. into visual signs. Can we say the four main 
     characters introduced in this episode -- Weissmann/Blicero, Gottfried, 
     Katje and Enzian -- also form a kind of mandala?
          
     p. 101
          
     13.) "How strangely opposite to the African -- a color negative, 
     yellow and blue."
          
     This doubling of Gottfried into Enzian triggers the narrative shift to 
     Blicero's Sudwest flashback, which deals explicitly with 
     "mirror-metaphysics" in a pyrotechnically dense passage that follows on pp.
     101-102.  (From "Liebchen, this is the other half of the earth" to  
     "...no one, no anti-Rilke, had named.")  Why is Enzian linked to these 
     colors?
     
     p. 104
     
     14.)  "And she is gone.  Crossed over the English lines at the salient 
     where the great airborne adventure lies bogged down for the winter[...]"
     
     What is the adventure referred to here?     
     
     15.)  "Or else this is her warning that--"
     
     The classic GR (if not TRP) tease: We are brought to the edge of some 
     revelation and left hanging.  Note that this statement seems to come 
     out of nowhere.  The "or else" implies some logical relationship to 
     the previous sentence, but there doesn't seem to be any.  Is Katje 
     doing the warning or being warned?  What does "this" refer to?
     
     p. 105
     
     16.)  "What more do they want?  She asks this seriously, as if there's 
     a real conversion factor between information and lives.  Well, strange 
     to say, there is.  Written down in the Manual, on file at the War 
     Department.  Don't forget the real business of the war is buying and 
     selling[...]  The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many 
     ways."
     
     One of the novel's great themes is expressed in a typical moment of 
     shtick.  Note how the narrative point of view suddenly shifts from 
     Katje to our friend the intrusive narrator, commenting on the action.  
     The passage continues to the infamous  "So Jews are negotiable.  Every 
     bit as negotiable as cigarettes, cunt, or Hershey bars."  Whatever one 
     makes of this passage, it is important to see it in the context of the 
     bitter black humor of narrative intrusion.  Note, also, that the 
     catalyst for this intrusion is the idea of a *conversion factor* -- yet 
     another notion of symmetry, or doubling.  Here it's lives/information.
     
     p. 106
     
     17.)  " ' "The White Visitation" is fine' she said, and stepped into 
     the void...."  [ellipses TRP]
     
     Katje's statement exactly mirrors the words of cliff-jumper Reg Le 
     Froyd in the previous episode.  What's this all about?  The "tarnished 
     silver crown" that Katje seems to be wearing throughout this episode 
     may also connect her to Reg:  Is Katje playing Ice Queen to Reg's Ice 
     King?
     
     p. 107
     
     18.)  " 'Am I going to let the extra weight make a difference?  It's my 
     *crotchet*, I'm indifferent to weight, or I wouldn't have brought the 
     girl back out, would I?' "  [emphasis TRP]
     
     This is Pirate's explanation to tripped-out Osbie for why he (Pirate) 
     carries an unfashionable, obsolete Mendoza instead of a Sten.  Talk 
     about feeling the potency of every word!  The word *crotchet* in this 
     passage hides some dizzying trails of exegetical fun.
     
     On a structural level, Katje overhears Pirate's comment, which 
     triggers a p.o.v. shift back to her, and we begin to modulate into the 
     famous tale of her 17th century ancestor, Frans Van der Groov and the 
     extermination of the Dodos on Mauritius.  The exact word *crotchet* 
     will pull us out of that scene on p.111, as we learn why Frans, like 
     Pirate, carries an obsolete gun (his haakbus): "...he didn't mind the 
     extra weight, it was *his* crotchet...." [ellipses and emphasis TRP]  
     This is a great example of how the mapping technique interacts with 
     the knottings-into.
     
     A-and, knotting and knitting seem to be the right metaphors here, 
     don't they?  The word *crotchet* is etymologically connected to the 
     word *crochet*.  (According to Webster's: "needlework consisting of 
     the interlocking of looped stitches formed with a single thread and a 
     hooked needle".)  The metaphor of *crotchet* to mean a fancy, conceit, 
     quirk, or eccentricity stems off from the idea of being *hooked* or 
     caught in the crotch of.  And, here, *crotch* can take us to the idea 
     of forking, parallel branches twinned out from a central node -- 
     reflected perfectly in the notched pole needed to support the barrel 
     of that heavy old "hookgun", called haakbus.  This notched pole is 
     also the origin of *crutch* (and is etymologically related) -- though 
     the OED notes a mysterious obscurity in all of these words -- to 
     *crouch,* which might have been pointed out during the 
     *Crutchfield/Crouchfield* part of the GRGR.  And *crotch,*  *crutch*  
     and *crouch* are all related to *cross* -- the Ur-word underneath all 
     of this play -- which spins us back up into the religious and colonial 
     themes again, clearly a concern of the whole Mauritius 
     flashback/hallucination.
     
     And as a final (by no means final -- this skein could be much further 
     tangled) filigree: the crotch notch fork (yet another hidden, here 
     inverted, arch!) should remind us of a certain letter of the alphabet 
     -- what else but V? -- whose shadowy presence darkly shimmers in the 
     episode. So when Pirate sez:  "It's my crotchet" it makes perfect 
     sense also to hear "It's my V."
     
     18.)  "The happy couple!"
     
     Comments about Pirate's relationship with Katje?
     
     p. 109
     
     19.)  "There they were, the silent egg and the crazy Dutchman, and the 
     hookgun that linked them forever, framed, brilliantly motionless as 
     any Vermeer."
     
     This tableau-like image reminds again of the idea of God as both 
     creator and destroyer.  B-but -- why else is the tale of the Dodo 
     slaughter recounted?
     
     p. 112
     
     20.)  " [...] none less than Gerhardt Von Goll, once an intimate 
     and still the equal of Lang, Pabst, Lubitsch."
     
     Gerhardt, here given some cachet, is another way to remind us of 
     film.  Any comments, by the way, on Osbie's All-Time List?
     
     p.113
     
     21.)  "The Dutch resistance will then 'raid' this site, making a lot 
     of commotion, faking in tire-tracks and detailing the litter of hasty 
     departure."
     
     This fake *raid,* wherein the three minutes twenty-five seconds of fake 
     *Schwarzkommando* film directed by Von Goll will be *discovered*, is 
     described exactly the way a war movie of a raid would be shot -- 
     another comment on the relationship of film to the *reality* it 
     supposedly captures.
     
     22.)  " 'Indeed, as things were to develop.' writes noted film critic 
     Mitchell Prettyplace, 'one cannot argue much with his estimate, though 
     for vastly different reasons than Von Goll might have given or even 
     from his peculiar vantage foreseen.' "
     
     This seemingly out-of-nowhere interjection, which occurs in this portentous
     episode's penultimate paragraph, is a good example of those moments in GR 
     where we are suddenly warped into the future.  The effect of this narrative
     gambit is to distance the text from its own primary narrative line (which 
     steadily attenuates during the novel anyway -- tricks like this being one 
     way that progress is effected).  This pattern of narrative helps to 
     destabilize the novel's chronology, forcing the question "What is the 
     temporal locus of this book?"  This trope supports the idea that the 
     *present* in GR is not WW II Europe, but early 1970s USA. 
     
     Other comments about this passage?  How 'bout that Prettyplace?
     
     23.)  "The camera follows as she moves deliberately nowhere [...] her 
     hair not bluntly Dutch at all, but secured in a modish upsweep with an 
     old, tarnished silver crown...."
     
     The Mandala/circle closes as the episode ends with a repetition of its 
     opening words.  The film, then being shot, is now being watched by 
     octopus Grigori as part of his conditioning regimen.  Slothrop will 
     *rescue* Katje from Grigori's *attack* in the opening of Part 2.  
     Comments about this?



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