V.

[ckaratnytsky at nypl.org]

     OK, I'm game, deep breath, here goes:  

     SUCK HOUR!
     
     I know, I know, it's shamelessly predictable, but what the heck:  This
     is the first free-for-all, piss-stop, cyber-convergence,  
     what-have-you on the V. coach party.  Grip, still cranky?  How's that 
     seat feel?  The dolphin boy, Teen Age Riot's awake, but how 'bout the 
     rest of you?  Straighten out those Godzilla t-shirts and pull up those 
     ill-fitting pants!   
  
     Having expended all of my more trenchant ruminations on images and 
     tauntings of anadromous (don't know that that means?  well, look it 
     up) Steely, I have managed to muster a few random questions, which, 
     though they may serve only to expose me as an ignoramus (pomo poser 
     that I am), are submitted in the spirit of "oh, well, it wouldn't be 
     the first time."   Maybe we can consider these as something resembling 
     a starting point for our discussion of this Pynchonian Pentateuch.  
     Thus:  
     
     1. Chapter 1.  The paragraph which begins "Since his discharge from 
     the Navy Profane had been road-laboring and when there wasn't work 
     just traveling, up and down the east coast like a yo-yo..."  (Harper 
     Perennial paperback, p. 10)  What visions does this paragraph conjure? 
     A-and--why is it dark in the east and why are there no more bars? 
     
     2. Chapter 1.  "Love for an object..."  (HP, p.23)  Oy V., oy 
     vey--any illumination that can be shed on the many vexing female 
     characters would be appreciated.  (Later, Christ!--bierhalle Hanne 
     with her "cowlike" calm.  This word makes me want to scream.)  
     
     3.  Chapter 2.  "Since 1945, Herbert Stencil had been on a conscious 
     campaign to do without sleep.  Before 1945 he had been slothful..."  
     (HP, p. 54)  Why is Stencil, former dharma bum, being linked to 
     Arjuna, famous conqueror of sloth?  Is there more to Stencil than his  
     existential quest (as if that weren't enough)?
     
     4.  Chapter 3.  What is the point of the arrangement of this chapter?
     I'm not sure I "get" the perspective given by these 
     almost-Hitchcockian vignettes--"the space of this vantage."  (HP, 
     p.94)
     
     5.  Chapter 4.  "Schoenmaker, being conservative, referred to his 
     profession as the art of Tagliacozzi."  (HP, p.97)  Quite the nose 
     job, eh? 
     
     6.  Chapter 5.  
     
     Opener:  "The alligator was pinto: pale white, seaweed black.  It 
     moved fast but clumsy.  It could have been lazy, or old or stupid.  
     Profane thought maybe it was tired of living."  (HP, p.111)
     
     Then:  " 'V. came to me tonight, upset.  She and Paul have been at it 
     again.  The weight of guilt is so heavy on the child.  She almost sees 
     it:  as a huge, white lumbering beast, pursuing her, wanting to devour 
     her...' "  (HP, p. 121)
     
     Finally:  "At half past one the phone rang.  It was Stencil.  
     'Stencil's just been shot at,' he said."  (HP, p.131)

     How does Stencil transmogrify from Arjuna into an alligator (and so 
     soon yet)?  And, more:  Does this mean that V. really *is* Stencil's 
     mother?  (I don't remember if this same question was answered the 
     first time around, when posed by Lot64--and sent to me some months ago 
     when I joined this list on a motherquest.  Lot64 cited some closing 
     graphs that supported the same idea, but we're not even close to those 
     yet.)  The images here in Chap. 5 may bolster the V.-as-mother 
     interpretation, but is it possible to be definitive about such a thing 
     at this point in our reading? 
     
     7.  General question:  Why the cut and contrast between the Nueva York
     bits and the Malta bits:  the arch-Brit colonial spyjinks and the 
     proto-American jazz-y street-y org-y?

     Enough.  Somebody else.
     
     Chris