The Tale of Tyrone's dick
Jan Klimkowski
jan.klimkowski at bbc.co.uk
Thu Jul 31 05:55:37 CDT 1997
My primary reading of the rocket/hardon scenes is as the most brilliantly
surreal parody of wartime behaviourist research.
There were plenty of behaviourists like Pointsman who were given cash and
experimental freedom by the war, and I can think of at least three
British institutes which, in different ways, could serve as models for
the White Visitation. Equally, we now know that it wasn't just those
nasty Nazis who "recruited" children into bizarre experimental
programmes. The historical context making it possible for young Tyrone
to have been sold to one of his country's covert scientists certainly
exists - both in Britain and the US.
With this historical background as a given, enter Thomas Pynchon the
artist. A few turns of the spiral later, and we end up with a
conditioned stimulus-response between Slothrop's erections and the
Rocket, which is a stroke of surreal genius. The parody then develops
with bumbling surveillance of Slothrop's amorous liaisons, leading to
manic attempts to discern The Pattern, and various levels of paranoia as
to precisely what kind of relationship exists between Slothrop and
Rocket/Death.
One of the crucial things about covert science, ie science funded by
intelligence agencies and classified, is that Peer Review as we know it
simply doesn't exist. Thus bad science can thrive. And scientists,
(often recruited precisely because their ethics are dubious), get endless
grants, academic freedom, and supplies of experimental subjects, to
pursue their own particular hobby horses. These hobby horses are, on
occasion, both insane and sadistic. As a surreal parody of this, the
Tale of Slothrop's Dick is in a class of its own.
jan
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