GRGR7: Almost keeping up

Thu Dec 19 12:34:20 CST 1996

A pity that the Advent passage comes *after* the season, but what the heck.  
Here are some thoughts on GR 7:

     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.  

Actually, I think it recalls in some ways even more the chapter "V. in Love"
since we have people watching people.  Although Katje only learns later that
she's been filmed, there seems to be a suggestion of her awareness of being
watched--how could she not help that, given her paranoid past history?

	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? 

We're at PISCES, probably within The White Visitation itself.  Katje, having
been brought over the channel by Pirate is now being filmed at Pointsman's 
request, all as part of his growing plot and plans for Slothrop, while Osbie
is busy in the kitchen.
	In terms of POV, we are given access to 1) Katje's own perceptions;
2) a description of the camera's presumably objective record, and the cameraman's
tending of the instrument; and 3)Osbie's perceptions, addled by that aminita.

     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?

Weissmann is the guy working on spherics in the Sudwest in "Mondaugen's 
Story" in V.  He was pretty creepy then, consorting with Vera and Helga.
We can trace a bit of his history--he picked up Enzian while there, 
returned to Europe, was promoted.  Life in Nazi Germany was an easy match.
Pirate has his own demons to wrestle with, but he's Katje's "contact" in
more ways than one.

     In terms of narrative shift, how long ago did the events happen 
     that Katje recalls?

Not too long ago, I think.  At some point, Enzian had left Blicero and he'd
taken up Katje and Gottfried.  Then Katje skipped out, leaving Gottfried
and the rocket.

     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.     

Again, look at the mirror imagery in "V. in Love."  The only way to achieve
satisfaction here is by looking at yourself---narcissism is associated with
"perversion" and is life-denying (compare "San Narcisso").  Katje will 
struggle to connect with someone/something.

On p. 96, note that the Oven Game is a shelter for all of them.  Perversion
and horror are a "preserving routine" against the greater perversion and
horror of the War itself.

Notice too that "no bearing is exempt" from bombs.  Just what Roger's been
trying to tell everyone!

Here is the source of the guilt that haunts Katje.  She is an Allied agent,
calling coordinates for bomb strikes that could doom her, that could doom
Blicero whom she wants and needs as much as she fears and hates him.  Her
requirement for this job, though, is to expose Jewish families, so she
has their fates on her conscience as well.

     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?     

For the life of me, I do not understand Rilke, and I've tried, but Blicero's
understanding of the phrase can be compared to Pokler's desire to be like
the characters played by Klein-Rogge, the giving in to annihilation, to
elemental destruction.
	If Rilke meant a change toward something more wholly in tune with
Eros (which is what I *think* he might have meant), Blicero's desire is
the Freudian Thanatos--the desire for death, for cessation of desire, for
complete inanimation--and taking everything and everyone he can with him.     

     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.

One could contrast Judeo-Christian (and Muslim) monotheism with, for example,
Hinduism.  In the cyclical nature of that religion, creation implies 
destruction and vice-versa.  That is why Siva and Kali are worshipped for
their life-giving, as well as destructive, properities.  I don't know what
affinities one could find in Herero myth, but its the destruction of the
Hereroes in the Sudwest that reawakened Blicero/Weissmann to the power of
destruction.  See p. 100--Where that all comes together in Enzian's phrase
Ndjambi Karunga.

BTW, notice that the name of his Berlin lover on p. 98--Rauhandel--literally
means "rough trade."

Blicero is a monster--but Pynchon takes care that we understand and perhaps,
like Katje, even come to pity the monster and what formed him.

     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).

Notice that this idea of complementarity in creation arises again not only
in Blicero but in Pointsman, as he later falls prey to that "yin-yang
rubbish."  What ought to express the completeness and wholeness of creation,
the mystic's realization that All Is Holy, becomes perverted in both of
these men, but Pointsman's is the weaker and therefore the lower perversion.

     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?

Yes.

     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?

He is linked to them by Blicero, using Rilke's gentian to give him that name,
but Enzian also insists on his *own* color--"red, and brown . . . *black*",
all colors of life in GR, inverting the usual Western values that associate
the latter two colors esp with shit and death.

On p. 102, notice that Blicero worries about the absence of the war.  The little
game of William Tell that he envisions as a substitute for Hansel and Gretel
is clearly inadequate for his needs.

and then, by 103, the transition to Gottfried's POV.  The only one missing now
is Enzian, who in some respects is never found.

     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?

Katje, in her guilt, *wants* to be killed.  She's been a double agent at
least.  Piet, Wim, etc. seem to be Resistance figures.  But, contemptuously,
they won't even give her the comfort of assassinating her  (for exposing
the Jewish families?).

     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.

And it gives a context for Katje's agony.  Her worries about the conversion
of life into capital are almost irrelevant, when They are so effortlessly
and deliberately engaged in the same thing.

     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?

Good point.  Katje, perhaps more than ever, needs someone to take Blicero's
place, in some way.  Pointsman will be happy to oblige.

Note that on p. 106, this long digression ends and we're back with Katje and
Osbie as she's being filmed.

Another point on 106, note Osbie's reference to WHITE ZOMBIE, which did
star Lugosi.  Given all the references to death-in-life--vampires, the
qlippoth, etc--in GR., this is the only reference to Zombies, perhaps because
they come from a *black* culture.  Thus, it's important that this is a
*white* zombie.  A careful use of references by TRP here!

And Osbie sees in DUMBO the "green and magenta face of Mr. Ernest Bevin"--
instead of the magic feather that will become a point of reference for
Slothrop and Pig Bodine.  DUMBO is an interesting example of the use of
film for metaphoric resonance in GR.  The little elephant can do amazing
things, but thinks he needs the help of a "magic feather" when it's really
just him alone.  Then, we'll read of those dead soldiers in the Ardennes
clutching talismans (like magic feathers that let them down).  Dumbo is
helped along by a bunch of stereotypically jive-talking black crows.
And "Dumbo" was the name given to B-17 bombers in the Pacific (although
its not clear that TRP knew that.)

Note also those colors of green and magenta in the phrase quoted above!

     18.)  "The happy couple!"

     Comments about Pirate's relationship with Katje?

See above.  Up to now, they've been on a professional footing, but that has
given Pirate a sense of at least paternal protection toward her, while she 
 . . . 

On p. 108--Weisenburger notes that the untranslated Dutch verse should read:
		I hold you dearer than a boar-swine
		although it were of fine gold y-wrought.

Pigs, again!
But the pigs here are complicit with Frans van der Groov in the extinction of
the dodoes.

But here's another complication--a very wild cartoon by Frank Tashlin called
PORKY IN WACKYLAND, where he encounters the "dodo" who is a character capable
of all sorts of mischief (a version has been revived in TINY TOONS on TV).
This Dodo is quite different from its real-life namesake, but the interaction
with young Mr. Pig is worthy of note.

The reference on 108 to the Dutch Tulip Mania, which was one of the great
commodities speculation busts of history, notes Franz's affection for a
certain streaked variety.  That streaking effect, I understand, is actually
the result of a blight.  One could make some connections here between
capitalism and the disruption/corruption of nature.

     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?

Isn't it another allegory of imperialism?  A forerunner of what will happen
to the Hereros?

On p. 111, Weisenburger can't find a source for the apparent quote--
"for as much as they are the creatures of God, and have the gift of rational
discourse, acknowleding that only in His Word is eternal life to be found"

Now, this phrase occurs in the midst of a guilty pantheistic (and thus
heretical) fantasy of Franz's--that the dodoes have "a Gift of Speech . . . 
a Conversion of the Dodoes."  So is the phrase from Franz's imaginings--
or is he "quoting" something he already knows.  One could imagine it
coming from a missionary's description of a native population of the New
World or of Asia or Africa.

Look at what follows: "Salvation" means "you get to feed us"  To be "saved"
is to be condemned (another way of saying "Soylent Green is people!")

     p. 112

"Angels" reappear in the form of the starlings of London--"converging to
hazy stone pedestals, to emptying squares and a great collective sleep."
There are echoes here of the end of Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning":

		And, in the isolation of the sky,
		At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
		Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
		Doward to darkness, on extended wings.

These lines follow the revelation that "The tomb in Palestine/Is not the
port of spirits lingering./It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."

It is Advent season in GR, let's recall, and Stevens liked to use angels
as metaphors too!

When Osbie observes to Pirate, "He's haunting you," who does he mean?  Franz
(a fantasy of Katje's that Pirate gets to appropriate)?  Or someone else?

Notice that Katje's role (literally) in the film just made is also a role in
Pointsman's Plan--but no one seems to know what's going on.

     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?

About Osbie's list, see above.  The references here are interesting.  Lubitsch
had left Germany in the 1920s to pursue a very successful career in Hollywood.
Pabst, the most politically-committed and leftist of the German directors, went
there too but failed and returned and worked under the Nazis.  But, with the 
single exception of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, *all* of the overt German
film references in GR are to films by Fritz Lang.  More on those specific 
films--METROPOLIS, DIE FRAU IM MOND, DER MUDE TOD, and DR. MABUSE, among 
others--will come later, but it is worth noting that Lang told the 
(possibly apocryphal) story that Goebels offered him the post of head of
German film production--and that he left Germany the next day.

It has been noted that there was a Lang retrospective in LA around the time
that TRP was living there, and that Lang made a personal appearance.

     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.

Faking film scenes was not unknown as a psy-ops procedure.  One of the most
famous newsreel clips shown in the West during the war was that of Hitler
dancing a jig on hearing of the fall of Paris.  That was actually a loop of
one shot of him stamping his foot in delight--all intended to make the 
Fuhrer look silly to British audiences (and others?).     

     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?

TRP likes to have his critical cake and eat it too, so to speak.  He mocks
the pretensions of academics, while still acknowledging the truths that they
are capable of noting.

     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?

"It's all theater!" as the novel sez.