GRGR(4)

[David Casseres]

[Andrew sez]
>Maybe I don't watch enough soap operas or something but this
>Roger-Jessica thing is really gripping, so real, so convincing. Does
>it really require a war for this sort of thing to happen. (I realise
>it helps but . . .) Seems more like a page straight out of TRP's home
>life (or lack thereof). Roger's presuming is so typically male - well
>at least typical of the sort of male I am, anyway. And Jess's reaction
>is something I have seen happen so often, including happening to me in
>the past. However much the war contributed to setting up the
>circumstances for Roger, Jessica and Beaver's awkward triangle to be
>born and grow, its precise character, its articulation, is nothing to
>do with the war and everything to do with Roger and Jess's character.
>Roger says `the war is my mother' but doesn't answer whether his
>mother knows he is out and about getting himself into scrapes. I
>suspect his mother has no idea of what he actually gets up to.

What I get out of this is that the war becomes the mother, the cause, of 
*everything.*  Including things that we think of as having "natural" 
causes, like Roger and Jess's character.  For the war transforms 
everything to such a degree that we can no longer separate its effects 
from the "natural" causes of things.

There's an equation, by the way, of the war and the laboratory, and later 
the Kinderofen.  Does Slothrop get a hardon because of the conditioning 
he received in the laboratory, now called into the service of the war, or 
because of Katje's stupendous eroticism, itself forged in the Kinderofen? 
 Or what?

Cheers,
David