GRGR(6) - Ep. 16 (up to the advent section)

[rj]

That > anthropomorphic bedroom Jeremy notes:

"The night room heaves a sigh, yes Heaves, a Sigh -- old-fashioned
comical room, oh me I'm hopeless, born a joker never change, flirting
away through the mirrorframe in something green-striped, pantalooned and
ruffled -- meantime, though, it is quaint, most rooms today hum you
know, have been known also to "breathe", yes even *wait in hushed
expectancy* and that ought to be the rather sinister tradition here,
long slender creatures, heavy perfume and capes in rooms assailed by
midnight, pierced with spiral stairways, blue-petaled pergolas, an
ambience in which noone, however provoked or out of touch, my dear young
lady, Heaves, a Sigh. It is not done." (122.17)

The reversion to a narrative "I" here is unprecedented. It is
self-consciousness along the lines of Tristram Shandy's, and I can't see
it as either Rog or Jess self-addressing. Pynchon is the harlequin
figure "flirting away through the mirrorframe" here: he has set up the
images which keep "flashing *in*" for Jess; the blissfulness and
sentimentality ("Roger's heart grows erect, and comes. That's really how
it feels.") explicit in the montage of scenes from Rog and Jess's
whirlwind romance which precede and follow. And, this admission of
narrative artifice comes right after the corresponding image of the spy
through the orange shade watching Tyrone and Darlene's lovemaking at the
end of the previous section. Slothrop's promiscuity/Mexico's fidelity is
another pairing to note. Death and life, with sex as the common
denominator.

There "should" be "sinister" overtones to their affair -- there's a war
on, after all -- but there aren't. Except for the fact that Rog has to
suppress his curiosity about what Jess does with Jeremy, contend with
the agony that there are things he will *never know*, and repress the
statistical certainty that Jess will finally end up with the Beaver, her
more socially-mobile betrothed, after this blithe Wartime intermezzo
with Rog. And, he does this.

Rog's solipsistic paranoia (124-125) is more applicable to Slothrop,
isn't it? But, it's also what we as readers are doing, too, lest we
accuse Rog of being over-sensitive ("Yes: suppose they *can* see into
your mind!" 124.31  Well, through the magic of a literary
stream-of-consciousness narrative, of course *we* can! A-and, the notion
of a "psychic-unity-with-the-Controlling-Agency" seems like a pretty
good metaphor for the contract enacted between author, text and reader,
in a traditional narrative, at least.)

Is the ad for "G-5-to-be ... 're-education' experts" (125.22) which Rog
considers going for a reference to what Slothrop ends up being,
spontaneously, in the Zone?

126.19 "seventh Christmas of the War ... " Starting from 1938? From when
Roger was co-opted into war service, perhaps? Or is it suddenly 1945?

The sexual abandonment Jess achieves with Rog is a species of
transcendence which keeps her coming back to him. But she also has to
suppress her revulsion towards Rog's cynicism, morbidity, stinginess,
jejune obstinacy; his "darkness" and Death-obsession. But then the
trivialities of daily life -- living -- reassert themselves again. Puff
on a cigarette. Sodality and chatter. Mending nylons. The "Pipe" she'll
buy Jeremy for Xmas.

best