VLVL [8] When BV possessed her

[bgannon]

Reminds me of Schoenmaker in V, who after all used a dentist's chair to
alter Esther's infrastructure.

B
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Date: Saturday, January 23, 1999 3:29 AM
Subject: Re: VLVL [8] When BV possessed her


>
>
>On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Doug Millison wrote:
>
>> On another thread, Dr. Elasmo, with his visage plastered on his
television
>> commercials ("his ubiquitous screen image"),  somehow reminds me of the
eye
>> doctor who looks down from the billboards in The Great Gatsby, with the
big
>> difference that Elasmo is a character in VL, apparently an agent of Brock
>> Vond, responsible for Weed's  "therapy sessions" (p. 240), which sound a
>> bit like Frenesi's trips behind the "Thorazine curtain".  Interesting to
>> see Mr. P. put a dentist in this role, working for a character, BV, that
>> Pynchon associates with Nazi SS officer, animal predator (raptor),  child
>> molester, on top of the normal dose of villainy that comes with the
>> prosecutor territory. On the lighter side, Elasmo is such a goofy name,
>> plus the "credit dentist" associations that Paul has mentioned -- P's
>> having fun with this one
>
>I had another thought on this one. Credit dentists in their ads (in
>my day on the radio--probably KFWB) emphasized that the experience would
>be painless both to your pocketbook (an easy payment plan) and to your
>nerve endings. One name I remember was Dr. Painless Parker. Another even
>more famous one was Dr. Beauchamp (pronounced Bee-chimp). Although Larry
>Elasmo's practice was described as a "world of discomfort" which suggests
>Nazi-like purposeful infliction of pain which certainly some might
>associate with dentistry (plus there was the Kafkaesque prolongation of
>the process), the actual case was that though it took an inordinate amount
>of time Elasmo drugged pain away, only with the extra wrinkle that also
>over time patients (here Weed) became forgetful of things like committment
>to the movement and such. The very name Elasmo suggests forgetfulness and
>loss of resolve. Larry provides more lassitude or something like that.
>
> P.
>
>