Prosthetic Paradise(2) Enfetishment&MS

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Michael Perez wrote:
> 
> Terrance wrote:
> "All empires are equal, does it follow from this statement
> (let's assume its true) that there is moral indeterminacy?
> What does Enzian say, 'Perhaps it's theatre, but they Seem
> no longer to be allies...' What does he mean? And what does
> it mean that he says or thinks this? GR.326"
> 
> Immediately after the quoted passage we are given "though the history
> they have invented for themselves conditions us to *expect* 'postwar
> rivalries,' when in fact they may all be a giant cartel including
> winners and losers both, in an amiable agreement to share what is there
> to be shared."  In fact, we find along the way within the text and in
> the whole story behind some of the references in it, that this has
> indeed been going on all along.  Business is business and knows no
> boundaries.  Politically, there are rivalries.  There is much jockeying
> for Control of people and land in the zones and other places among the
> conquered territory.  This begins the pissing contest otherwise known
> as the Cold War, of course.  Now the good guys are bad guys to each
> other and can have a tug of war over the spoils.  Perhaps we can call
> it moral ambivalence or situational ethics, but tactics belie any real
> attempt at or concern with goodness.  Is this evil if it is the service
> of whichever side one is on?  Yes, I believe this myself, but within
> the text, much of it is treated matter-of-factly, wonderfully so.  I
> think we are supposed to get the idea that the characters, for the most
> part, in it for themselves and care (or know) very little about the
> global changes occurring all around them.  This is the essence of my
> "measly little lives" theory from early on in GRGR.  As to what Pynchon
> reveals about his own ideas of morality, I really don't consider this
> all that much.  Does he think capitalism is good or evil?  Does he eat
> Count Chocula for breakfast?  I don't really care.  What he reveals in
> the books demands the attention of an active reader.  It is not in
> code, but is indeed open to many interpretations.  I don't think it was
> meant to be a morality tale, but since most people have decided for
> themselves what could be considered good or evil, moral or devoid of
> morality, GR certainly challenges the reader's beliefs.
> 
> Michael
>

I agree with all you say here. I also agree with Paul's
comments on why Enzian thinks what he thinks. Who is Enzian?
What is he up to? How did he get these ideas? How is
different from the holy woman in the earth? Everyone in GR
has some relationship to   "the Rocket. The preterite in
Pirate's dream, for example, can be seen as fleeing the
rocket that screams, both I think, the rocket that is
screaming and "the Rocket." We follow Slothrop under the
mountains to the rockets and we go with him on a
voyeuristic, mindless tour of Dora and all the Horror
associated with Nazi genocide--including that "genocidal
dress rehearsal" in the African colonies. "The Rocket," may
be an alternative, perhaps the antitheses of that woman in
the earth. 


 "though the history they have invented for themselves
conditions us to *expect* 'postwar rivalries,' when in fact
they may all be a giant cartel including
winners and losers both, in an amiable agreement to share
what is there
to be shared." 

What is there to be shared? Is it the rockets or "the
Rocket" and is it so very important that They are "inventing
history" and "conditioning" us so that they may share it,
what ever it is? My guess is that part of what "it" is, has
a lot to do with that woman in the earth--that natural
thing, that cycle of leaves falling from the trees, turning
into muck and mire, getting all soggy and wet on soft days,
stinking, blackening in the breath of winds and certainty of
sunshine, so fecund, so fertile. so full of death and life
and return. The limerick boys, use rockets and rocket parts
for sexual toys. What wrong with Marvy's mother's can't they
make it with a human? What the hell attracts them to this
artifice? Is it simply that enfetishment satire at play
here? Maybe? Maybe the rockets were basically duds for
Hitler and the boys (that's the idea I got from Albert
Speer's 'memoirs), but this "Rocket" is not a dud. Maybe it
has won the War for someone. Maybe it has won the big prize
(not Pointy's Nobel). Maybe it is the SOUL? Later, the
narrator will say "the Rocket" is the Soul of the church,
the government, the powerful Kartels, but that's only one
statement about maybe the equivalent of Melville's white
whale so, but here and the narrative is so typical of GR, we
have Enzian's thoughts and conversations, dreams, warped and
paranoid thoughts and ideas and a narrator comes in here and
says "Enzian has grown cold...love, among these men..." And
the irony here is so tricky and slippery, but I think that
the narrator is laying it down pretty straight with, "the
Rocket was an entire system won, away from the feminine
darkness, held against the entropies of lovable but scatter
brained Mother Nature," and look who comes into the
narrative now, Weissman. Nature here seems to be female, not
like those rockets Marvy's mothers are playing with and not
like the big Rocket, "the Rocket" "the masculine
technologies" the "entire system"  and she (Nature) is
scatter brained, not like those mindless ones that can't
Know Nuremberg, but random with life returning, progenitive,
and not something the prophets, disciples, and congregations
that worship the conscious Control of sterile determination. 

Is everything permitted? I don't know? I'm beginning to feel
like Alyosha now, "That's Rebellion." Keep all flames coming
to my monastery @lycidas.