GRGR(6) - Ep. 15

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

rj wrote:

> This section begins, atypically, in the past tense.

Yes and poor Slothrop, it's very early in the morning--sunrise. His hopes
for a ruptured duck, now a section 8 are lost and what of all those bricks
and squares and frames, traps, Pearls, pigs, parables and folk tales of
home. Poor Slothrop, a Harvard experiment, like one of Ginsberg's Howlmen,
hopelessly ranging the East End in a drug stupor, breathing the rank air of
Thameside, separated from the life he lived before Pointman's race relations
research and The kenosha Kid, Crouchfield, the Westwardman and Whappo.

> Slothrop had been in
> the "nut ward" for less time than expected. He realises or suspects he's
> being followed. (114) Darlene works at St Veronica's. Slothrop only
> vaguely remembers Darlene and Mrs Quoad: they are "independent of his
> shorthand of stars." (115) Has Slothrop been set up here, the memory
> "planted" while he was in St Veronica's, perhaps?

> The letter to Nallinecould also have been something he imagined he wrote
> while drugged, like
> the letters to the Kenosha Kid. Darlene does seem to know something
> about the rocket-erection connection, too, as Gary pointed out. (120)
> And, as Gary also noted, later Mrs Quoad turns out to be someone else
> entirely. (Or, does Darlene assume her identity?)

Fantastic, ambivalent and ultimately irresolvable.

>
>
> Darlene: "You came back! Ah Tyrone, you're *back*" (115, her emph.)
> Shock? Surprise? Why? Or is it simple joy. (I think it's this: I like
> Darlene.)

I think it's "and her *name's,* uh, well, oh--Darlene. Golly it's Darlene."
One could write a book on reader/text/narrative in Gr from this sentence. A
perfect example of Pynchon's narrative technique in GR and guess what, it
gets better.

>
>
> The section at 115.26, as the memory of previously being at Mrs Quoad's
> flat begins "reassembling" for Slothrop, could represent: a) the
> surfacing of a suppressed memory; or b) some type of hypnotic suggestion
> being enacted (don't forget that Mrs Quoad's a "witch".)

Drugs, as Doug has pointed out, serve several functions in Pynchon's
narrative. One, is to alter perceptions of time and space, Fantastic! Paul
mentioned Proust. Proust often Recalls narrative from a smell or taste.
Drugs, like the ones Pointsman administers and the ones a "witch" might give
you can cross and confuse visual with oratory or taste and touch etc.  Note
the word "recall" "she recalls Slothrop." Recall here, serves to multiply
and mix perceptions of time and space. The description of Mrs Quod's
apartment is on one level detailed, the music provides a precise date, the
artifacts and so on as Fowler or Wiesenburger tell us, but Slothrop is being
taken along, outside his memory, fading faces, the maps and stars,  the room
clarifies *part* of whoever he was inside, stored quiescent...outside his
head.

>
>
> The names of the wine jellies -- Lafitte Rothschild and Bernkastler
> Doktor (116) -- seem to have some significance beyond being wine
> varieties, do they?

Yes! Mrs Quoad is "the one with the graft at the Ministry of Supply!"

>
>
> The metaphors for war weaponry in the section begin with the "cretonne
> camouflage" (116.5) and end with the Fire of Paradise/mustard gas
> analogy. (119) Just like Mrs Quoad and Darlene ("Show a little
> backbone." "Don't you know there's a war on.") we laugh at Slothrop's
> ridiculous predicament in the Disgusting English Candy Drill,
> trivialising or setting aside the metaphoric allusions to the ways death
> is wrought in war that Pynchon (Slothrop?) is making (right down to that
> "hopeless holocaust" he describes his tongue as.)

Right! "Unspeakably awful." "His tongue's a hopeless holocaust." Silent,
unspeakable, holocaust. Major theme. Remember Oedipa goes to a hotel and
there is a deaf and mute conference taking place. She considers giving them
the finger, but she doesn't.

>
>