GRGR3: Discussion Opener for Section 3

[Murthy Yenamandra]

Andrew Dinn opens GRGR3 with:
> 1)  `sensitive flame' (29.35) This is a term used of a Bunsen burner
>     flame (is it Bunsen's term?). It suggests that the inanimate flame
>     is actually animate or sentient, as does the continuation where it
>     `registers visitors as they enter and leave' and the later
>     reference when it `dives for shelter' (31.14) when the bomb drops.
>     Any comments on this inanimate/animate theme?

The 'sensitive' flame senses and registers the animate and sentient
visitors the same way that the 'holy circle' senses and registers the
spirit world (but the flame needs to be sensitive to do this, just as
the circle needs to be holy/sensitive to register the spirits). It's
just a different interface is all. The theme of the inanimate and
mineral sentience and the interlacing of the material and spirit world
is a pervasive theme for TRP.

> 2)  Why is TRP including all this spiritualist, voodoo shit?

See (1) above. Also, dismissing the 'spiritualist, voodoo shit' is
certainly premature, if not counter-productive to reading GR - one
doesn't get far if the only considerations are the 'living'. In fact, as
GR would soon make clear, the distinctions between the inanimate,
animate and the dead are not as clear as one would suspect. Note that
the comment about the 'Ouspenskian nonsense' is not from the narrator,
but from a society lady. I have a couple of Ouspensky's books at home -
I'll try to post something relevant in the coming days.

> 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).

I don't think GR sneers at it. The major interest of GR in psychology
and parapsychology is not really to investigate their claims, but to
explore the purposes that they are put to use by Them. Who needs an
invisible hand when everyone refuses to see the clearly visible one?
'Visibility' is not a property of the object alone, but also that of the
subject, who may or may not be trying to see and who may or may not be
capable of seeing and the conditions may or may not be conducive to
seeing.

> 11) "Brass throats and breasts warm to her blood, quake in the hollow
>     of here hand [. . .] feathered crosses" (31.8) These darts are
>     also animate, alive like birds.

Truly gorgeous and out of this world :-).

> 17) "Pirate wants Their trust [. . .] He wants understanding from his
>     *own* lot" (33.19) [...] "class nervousness" (32.33)

They do fit in with the earlier remarks about the 'beastly
fuzzy-wuzzies' and dacoit fantasies. Slothrop is not the only one who is
conditioned - Pirate is no less conditioned by where he is born and how
he is brought up. He is conditioned to want certain things, fantasize
about some other things and to fear something else. (I hate to peek ahead
of the schedule, but there is some good stuff about it later on when he
'decodes' the 'incoming mail'.)

> 21) "They are in love. Fuck the war" (42.2) Is this just hippy-dippy
>     naivety? Or can you really say this?

Isn't this the only thing you can say that lets you live?

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. Email: yenamand at cs.umn.edu
"Always there's that space between what you feel and what you do, and in
that gap all human sadness lies." - _Blue Dog_