GRGR(6) - Ep. 15

[Gary Thompson]

Another indeterminacy:

rj wrote:
> A-and, why doesn't *Slothrop* know that the
> bombs always fall on the places where he makes his conquests? Is it
> another case of "repression", like Katje's in the previous section? I'm
> tempted to see all the ominous war and death imagery as Slothrop's here.
> If he's been visiting all the V-bomb "incidents" (24.10, is the
> euphemism Slothrop's?) as a therapeutic exercise then why aren't the
> coincidences apparent to him? He's been getting a list of all
> "yesterday's hits", so eventually he'd have to cotton on, you'd think?
> (24)
> 
> Is there some sort of a time loop at play here? Or is it just that
> Slothrop is really dense? He's obsessed with the V2 which has his name
> on it: why can't he see the connection which is so obvious to everyone
> else?

Yeh, that's it--why is Slothrop represented to us as the time's great
hope, Rocketman, and the like, and at other times and in other ways he's
so thick? Maybe he works by insights ("the great bright hand reaching
out of the cloud. . . .") and these are anything but methodical
(contrast Pointsman here). Mostly, I suspect, "Slothrop"'s a noise our
mouths make, into which we pour a variety of associations (I know there
have been riffs on his name before now--sloth's there, P's favorite
among the seven deadlies, not quite sure what to do with the -rop part),
and some of these are the Conventional Hero fighting off the tank that
crashes into the party or making a hash pickup out of Potsdam (if that's
heroic), and part is boobish, a later avatar of Benny Profane, a quester
without a Grail (well, there's the rocket, but he gives up on that in
book IV). Again, this now-you-see-it, now-you-don't routine should cause
us to ask what's up with us in looking for these satisfactions.

Try it out, at least.

G.


> 
> The existence of the watcher through "the crack in the orange shade",
> and the taunting question ("where ... *would* you say ...?" my emph.),
> seems another instance where the role of author/reader is being
> foregrounded (along with the possibilities that someone is there, or
> that Slothrop imagines someone is there.) Why didn't the bomb fall after
> the last time Slothrop was there with Darlene ... ? (Because he never
> was ... ?) Further, is it a rhetorical question? 'On this house' being
> the obvious answer? And does the question address Slothrop, too, himself
> one of these "keepers of maps, specialists at surveillance"? Is this
> watcher in fact *also* Slothrop?
> 
> best