Missing parts

[JULIUS RAPER]

Terrance,
	A good point.  But each addition to the body has to go somewhere
and so, in the language of V. (the book), represents a falling away from
the human that defines a decadence, another narcissistic attempt to swap
the human for the inflated dreams of immortality. Is this not so?
				Best, Jack





On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:

> 
> 
> Pynchon seems more interested in added parts. This interest is evident in his
> early work--betwixt V. and CL--"The Secret Integration." In said story we find
> the Slothrops and Carl Barrington, an "imaginary" friend and double of Carl
> McAfee. Carl is made of junk and all the "possibilities turned away from." He
> is a robot of ballistics theory, science and invention, and following V.
> becomes Increasing an Abstraction and Increasing Inanimate, until he is
> scattered and abandoned "to the old estate's other attenuated ghosts." Sort of
> like our American Rocket Man!
> 
>