GRGR--Trying to Catch Up and Falling Further Back

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

I'm *way, way* behind in the GRGR, so I'm trying to catch up.  Here are
a few comments re: Andrew's remarks for GRGR 3:


2)  Why is TRP including all this spiritualist, voodoo shit?
	Because the distinction between "life" and "death" is--as of this
book--not nearly as clearcut as we like to think.  Following Eliot (following
Dante and others), life can merely be "Death's other kingdom" and there
can be realms of life that are unseen to us in the world as we think we
know it.  But on the Other Side, whose interests are being plotted for
This One?
	I'm still not sure I get the Thanatoids in VINELAND, but they are 
clearly a continuation of the theme.

3)  "West indians softly plaiting vowels round less flexible chains of
    Russian-Jewish conconants. . . ." (30.5) This regards language (or
    just speech?) as a sort of chemistry of phonemes, nix? This is
    just a TRP joke, no? a systematic, totalising account of
    non-systematic, fragmented phenomena? Like elsewhere in GR? Or
    not?

Or in a book that will document the "nations on the move" and that features
German-speaking Hereroes and Argentines in submarines, the whole idea of
"nationality" comes to be quite suspect.

4)  "Most skate tangent to the holy circle, some stay, some are off
    again to other rooms" (30.7) Why is the seance ring `holy'?

The "holiness" has implications of hermetic appeal, exlusion of the non-elect.
Those implications become somewhat more intense, if not clearer, in the
Rathenau seance.

5)  "reddish-brown curls tightening close as a skull-cap" Why skullcap?
    Is this a covert reference to Judaism? the Kabbala? soemthing else?

Skullcaps have also been traditionally associated with scholars, especially
those with a bent for Hermetic learning.  Isn't Faust often depicted wearing
one?

6)  "Once transected into the realm of Dominus Blicero [. . .]". (30.12
    onwards) This is Peter Sachsa speaking through Carroll Eventyr to
    Selena about Rioland feldspath, yes? (see 31.25 for
    confirmation). Is this paragraph all just hot air (personal wind!)
    or does it mean something?

Yes.  I think it's unwound in the section below.  Dominus Blicero of course
introduces us to (and perhaps misleads us with) Weissman's code-name, but
as we later learn, the name implies the whiteness of bleached bones.
(And consider *that* theme--the "darkness" of whiteness--which has been
a consistent source of entertainment for American writers from Melville
to Twain to Frost and beyond!)

7)  "It's control. All these things arise from one difficulty: control"
    (30.26) "the Invisible Hand" (30.30) Is this a major policy in
    GR's manifestoor just a throwaway introduced merely to set up a
    sneer at psychology or 'uspenskian nonsense'? (30.31). Remember
    that `Invisible hand' becomes visible, to Slothrop at least, when
    it materialises later on with a ponting middle finger sayign this
    way to the `Rocket cartel'.

If, as others on the list have remarked, the Invisible Hand harkens to
Adam Smith, it asks *what* or *whose* hand really guides these Markets.
No need for God?  "Then everything is permitted."  A-and that Nietzsche
knew what *that* could mean--but probably *would* mean.

8)  The "lady" and the "dock-worker" (30.37) - just someone out for a
    bit of rough?

Maybe.  Or is she just slumming?  Or is he a dockworker philosopher, like
Eric Hoffer (who certainly would have rejected Ouspenskian nonsense)?
Anyway, it's a clever bit to mingle Diesel and "Sous le vent" ("under
the Wind," which Roland sez is "everywhere").


10) 30.39 onwards and also 31.19-31.21 rapidly establish a character
    for Jessica with incredible economy. Is this the Jess we know and
    love from later on, though?

More or less.  Jessica, like many of the women in GR, *want* control but
also freedom.  Jessica is a somewhat more mundane version of what we
see in Katje and Greta, but Katje will opt for some kind of freedom,
Gretta will go mad [?].  She is in lust with Roger, finds something of
his moodiness and his wildness appealing, yet she is repelled by them
as well.


12) "Milton Gloaming cocks an eyebrow. His mind, always gathering
    correspondences, thinks it has found a new one" (31.22) i.e. with
    Slothrop's bulls-eyes. This also implies a certain sexual content
    in MG's watching. So, is Jessica similar to Slothrop? (an ddoes
    that make Roger akin to Katje et al)? Or is this a false
    correlation (a statistical freak!).

Gloaming, like Roger, is an information-gatherer.  But unlike Roger, he tries
to *do* something with what he learns.  He has enough sense to shut off the
gas, but his desire for meaning may be thwarted.  Perhaps a kind of anti-Roger?

13) "four-way entente" (31.24) Imagine this as a diamond shape. Roland
    at the top and Selena at the bottom vertex define an axis for
    information flow/communication. In the physical world the
    communication is effected by Carroll Eventyr. But in terms of who
    is supposed to be participating in the discourse it is actually
    Peter Sachsa who is speaking, telling Selena about Roland, the
    subject of the communication. So, Eevntyr and Sachsa sit at the
    left and right vertices of the diamond. Each side of the diamond
    from top to bottom via one or other vertex represnets a
    communication path, along one of which flow sounds in one case,
    meaning in the other.

    Also, relate this image to the novel. You the reader read about
    the characters and events in the book. The narrator(s) apparently
    tell you the story but it is really Pynchon who produces the words
    which you are reading. So, the subject of the book corresponds to
    Roland, the subject of Sachsa's discourse. The narrator in the
    book is Sachsa. Eventyr like Pynchon actually produces the words
    and Selena is you, the reader.

Ah, but it is a chain that should not be broken.  What are we (as readers
at least) without Pynchon?  What is he (as an author at least) without us?

    Finally, what about those names. Feldspath - seems to relate to
    the mineral feldspar. Roland? No idea unless this is his swansong,
    a belated chanson d'amour! In which case it's all getting a bit
    too romantic. Eventyr is a Norse(?) word for adventure. Selena is
    the moon. Anyone want to sculpt something out of this junk?

Well, "Roland" can be the champion of Roncevalles (a bit of an arrogant
fool at that) but as a name it also seems to connote a certain upper-class
effeteness which would be consistent with the words coming out of
Eventyr's mouth.

I'm not sure what to make of Eventyr, except that I continue to see the
name as a play on astrologer Carroll Righter, who was the subject of a cover
article on astrology in TIME (March 21, 1969) which also had a couple of
paragraphs about a rock group named The Fool!

16) "a crown and anchor game with which chance has very little to do"
    (32.25) Is this a snide dig at the "control" problem? i.e. when it
    comes down to it people put their effort into controlling the
    immediate and partial aspects of their lives, not the totality of
    things. What is `crown and anchor' by the way?

Dunno about the crown and anchor, but notice the very typical magical
transition here from Jessica to Pirate.  We shift from one consicousness
to another while scarcely noticing it!

17) "Pirate wants Their trust [. . .] He wants understanding from his
    *own* lot" (33.19) This suggests that "They" are his own lot, no?
    Part of his own personal or local Them system which these psi
    types do not share. The comment about "class nervousness" above
    (32.33) also suggest that the Eagle of Tooting idoes not fit in
    here. But why romance his own Them system? Is it that he loves the
    routine of his own paranoia or is he scared to lose it.

Like Pointsman, Pirate (at this point in timespace) wants to be accepted
by Them.  But that desire is one that he, unlike poor Pointsman, will
come to reject.  Here's that theme of the *need* for control that runs
throughout all of P's work.  It is inherent in V. and COL49 but first
elucidated in "The Secret Integration" where the kids go back to the 
parents who have betrayed their trust because they need them.
	Can we ever, any of us, truly shake of that need?  I doubt that
Pynchon had, at this point anyway, read Alice Miller's DRAMA OF THE
GIFTED CHILD, but her points might be relevant here.  We dont' want to
castrate Daddy; we want him to hug us, pat us on the head, tell us we've
been good!

18) "that stateless lascar across his own mirror-gass, taht poorest of
    exiles" (35.14) Pirate or TRP?

Does it matter?  (maybe.)
BTW, note the overt reference to TS Eliot on this page--acknowledgement
that is ironic at the same time.


19) I've already talked about the way that the interlude with Roger
    and Jessica is structured on pages 37-42. It starts and ends with
    them in the car, with narrative and dialogue and we drift in and
    out of Roger and Jess's thoughts and then into scenes from the
    past which contain their own narrative, dialogue and rendering of
    the mental. With each paragraph, or even individual lines, analyse
    who is saying what where and when (or who is being narrated as an
    indirect way of having them say it). How many narrators are there?
    Is there anything which is too confusing or does nto work?

Page 41--The description of Roger and Jess's hideaway, in a preterite
section of town, in a city under bombardment, and ultimately under
observation by an unseen source has also struck me as an echo of Winston
Smith and Julia in Orwell's 1984.

20) "through Roger's mineral, grave-marker self" si this the
    animate/inanimate theme again? (and how does it relate to `a soul
    in every stone'? Is there also, therefore, `a stone in every
    soul'?)
For Roger at least.  In love with statistics for their own sake, he has
to find the humanity behind them--and he will.  (Compare if you will Pokler)

21) "They are in love. Fuck the war" (42.2) Is this just hippy-dippy
    naivety? Or can you really say this? Compare it with Pirate's
    embarrassed, half-acknowledged sympathetic spurt `He is suddenly,
    dodderer and ass, taken by an ache in his skin, a simple love for
    them both that asks nothing but their safety. and that he'll
    always manage to describe as something else -- "concern", you
    know, "fondness. . . .'  (35.22).  Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh.  Choke.  Sob.
    Sniff, sniff.

And this is what marks this novel and sets it apart from all of P's previous
work.  I never believed that Profane (or V.) in love was more than a symbol,
an abstraction.  I never believed that Oedipa had felt much of anything for
Pierce or Mucho or (lord knows!) Metzger.  But Roger--and Pirate--and even
Enzian--are deeply, terminally in love.
	A-and this sets up the Tannhauser theme that we'll encouter later, kids!

Don Larsson, Manakto State U (MN)