GRGR(6) - Ep. 15 Reader Dissonance.

[Jill Adams]

Having chunked GR across the room I am de lurking to ask "WHY?"

So coincidental that Gary mentions Hannibal. I was chatting with a
colleague just hours ago who read Hannibal and said it was awful. An awful
read -- that was how he put it. So what a coincidence that I am finding GR
is also mostly for me is also an awful read. This reader is being pulled
back and forth in modes of the author's annoying self-masturbatory writing.
(ducking flames : O) Its like listening to a year long solo guitar riff
from some glam 70's spandex player who doesn't care if you like it or not.
Maybe that's why I don't get the book. Maybe that's it. It's a 70's book
and if you didn't get anything out of the 70's you won't understand the
book. My colleague and I have one thing in common. We have chosen to read
things that we consider awful so that we can be on the inside of some
knowlege about the books. Also, I have enjoyed all of the rest of TRP save
this one. Okay I did enjoy the Disgusting English Candy Drill. And the
toilet scene. And the part about the bra in the bombed out building. And
the cute meet and I like it whenever Jessica talks, "Don't be redic! This
book is terrif! And if you don't like it, what's the diff?"

Lately, Gary T. , rj and Michael P. have pointed out references to
Slothrop's character or other things that just drive home for me how HOLLOW
the character of Slothrop is and how flimsy the premise of discovering
where the bombs are going to fall based on some character's erections. I
surely hope the plot gets better than it is at this point. Thank god that
these exact same listers are also contributing helpful information to
actually understand the GR. Who is Slothrop really? He doesn't cotton on to
the bomb/sex thing, and I can't sympathize with any chick who would think
Slothrop is hot enough to sleep with, because there isn't much substance to
his character. Are people being paid to sleep with him?  And like Jeremy I
force myself to reread chapters after getting almost zilch out of them. At
least with M&D we got lots of depth of character definition for both
characters in the very first few pages. 

I do not understand what "beyond the zero" means. 

grladams

Gary Thompson wrote:
> 
> RJ raises the possibility that Slothrop's memory of Darlene in this
> episode has been planted (Terrance comments thereupon as well). Great
> posts, by the way--
> 
> rj wrote:
> > . . . 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 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".)
> 
> I don't think the point is for us to figure this out--probably most
> readers go with the conventional fictional reading which suggests that
> events occur in a "realistic" fashion unless there are cues (such as in
> "The Kenosha Kid") indicating fantasy, surrealism, or other modes, and
> then are involved in some confusion at the later point when Pointsman's
> crack investigators apparently discover inconsistencies--but the point
> is the indeterminacy. There's a bit at the start of Borges' story "Tlön,
> Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" that comes to mind here (but did I think of it all
> by myself, or was it planted . . . ?):
> 
> "Bioy Casares had dined with me that night and talked to us at length
> about a great scheme for writing a novel in the first person, using a
> narrator who omitted or corrupted what happened and who ran into various
> contradictions, so that only a handful of readers, a very small handful,
> would be able to decipher the horrible or banal reality behind the
> novel. From the far end of the corridor, the mirror was watching us . .
> ." (_Ficciones_ 17)
> 
> So we think we're supposed to see this as a representation of an actual
> historical world, tongue-holocausts and all, bolstered on the one hand
> by period references and fidelity to what that London _Times_ sez was
> going on? And on the other hand we get giant Adenoids and Pirates hired
> to manage other people's fantasies, Angels over Lübeck and some linkage
> between Slothrop's stars (women?) and rockets?
> 
> I think both are shadow games: there's a real holocaust out there and
> real Nazi-corporate types, and there are many layers of representation
> of these things, and we're being pulled back and forth, in modes
> entertaining and ominous among many colorations, and the main result for
> me is to inspire the repeated question about representation. What's the
> link between words on the page and anything else?
> 
> It's _not_ that there's no such link: there are many such links,
> including some that are privileged over others (a.k.a. dominant
> ideology, I suppose), and P is mixing it up so as to create an
> equivalent of his Zone, wherein we may construct or infer alternative
> versions. We're as much wanderers in this territory as Slothrop, because
> the area of reference isn't London or the ETO or 1944-45 any more, so
> much as where we live. (Does anyone close this book and say, "Wow, what
> a great read, now I can put this back on the shelf," as with, say,
> _Hannibal_?) (I don't think it's a high-status "small handful," if
> indeed that was what Borges had in mind above.)
> 
> There's a passage I'm looking for about how information is restricted
> precisely from those who like Slothrop had the greatest interest in
> finding it, throwing them (us?) back onto dreams, fantasies,
> drug-induced visions, u.s.w. Anyone have a page no.?
> 
> I can see why Jeremy had trouble getting a purchase on the Advent
> section . . .
> 
> Whaddya think?
> 
> Gary