GRGR(6) - Ep. 15 Reader Dissonance.

[Gary Thompson]

rj wrote:
> 
> Gary, on Jill's expression of disdain towards Slothrop:
> 
> > Well, yeah, that was the question. But instead of assuming that P was
> > trying to make him *non*-hollow, what do we do with the hollowness? Or,
> > rather, what does the text do with it, or we with the text?
> 
> I don't think Jill was saying that Slothrop isn't a "Fully Realized
> Character". She was concerned that there "isn't much substance to his
> character" (as David and Lars have been riffing on) in the sense that he
> doesn't seem to have a backbone, or moral fibre, or any sense of
> commitment in inter-personal relationships. At least, I think this is
> what she was getting at.

OK, my bad. But in this case, it turns into something like offering
advice to a literary figure not to be such a jerk. "Relax, Ahab. Let it
go. Don't go chasing that white whale." But of course, we all want to
give that advice. I was close to shouting at Tom Cruise last night not
to go into that big house with the limos in front, myself. (A couple of
Pynchonian resonances in _Eyes Wide Shut_, starting with the setting in
(near?) Glen Cove.) I think that involvement's a measure of our
engagement with the text, and acquired critical distance comes with a
cost. Something here might connect with Geli Tripping's discussion with
another witch about the relative values of love and technique (too lazy
to look it up now). 

> _GR_ *is*, after all is said and done, "the story of
> Slothrop", isn't it? Whatever else it may be.

I don't know. Better hold this one up until we get further along.

> As far as Jill's "dissonance" and intimations of literary
> self-masturbatoriness go, I'm tempted (though gingerly) to go back to
> one of Mark's (I think it was) opening sallies on the list -- which
> earned him quite a severe caning, I might add -- about _GR_'s appeal (on
> the surface at least) being pretty male-o-centric. Like B. Profane,
> Slothrop stands for pure sensory gratification in the immediate present
> -- true schlemihlhood, no heed for causality or consequence. This is a
> quintessentially 'male' response, I think. I'm not sure that any
> self-respecting woman *could* like/admire/sympathise with Slothrop and
> his plight, let alone want to sleep with him! 

Any self-respecting women want to chime in here? :-) 

Slothrop's fundamentally non-serious much of the time, at least until he
senses the Plot closing in about him. (His concern with the Rocket--is
that more than the focal point for the plot against Slothrop? Does he
have much in the way of altruism beyond a brief concern for what They
did with his pal Tantivy?) This non-seriousness is an odd feature for a
descendant of Puritans, but then his puritanism seems to be vestigial,
focused on sensitivity to what's in the sky, to the word and wordplay,
to a habit of reading world as text, but not to conventional moral
prescriptions. ". . . all of a sudden Slothrop picks up the scent of an
unmistakable no it can't be yes it is it's a REEFER! A-and it's burning
someplace close by." (365) He reads comic books when he's supposed to be
studying, he sees women basically as interchangeable--up to and
including Bianca, who's young enough to do Shirley Temple imitations:

> 	"We can get away. I'm a child, I know how to hide. I can hide you too."
> 	He knows she can. He knows. Right here, right now, under the makeup and the fancy underwear, she _exists_, love, invisibility. . . . for Slothrop this is some discovery.
> 	But her arms about his neck are shifting now, apprehensive. For good reason. Sure he'll stay for a while, but eventually he'll go, and for this he is to be counted, after all, among the Zone's lost. The Pope's staff is always going to remain barren, like Slothrop's own unflowering cock. (470)

This is followed by a long generalized take on Bianca's last look,
breaking his heart, as an emblem of all those Last Times, and a turn up
out of the book to the reader: "She favors you, most of all. You'll
never get to see her. So somebody has to tell you." (472)

Slothrop himself is non-serious, then, but GR is very serious about him,
I think. 

It's probably cheating to reach so far back into the book when we're
s'posed to be about 136. But that's a deficiency of the GRGR set-up,
with little bitty chunks every two weeks or so--it discourages links and
more distant perspectives. But to the extent this may be Slothrop's
book, it's Slothrop as a representative of some element of a character
who is involved with surfaces, gliding along, avoiding commitments. This
is a mark of his freedom and an element of his doom:

Q.	Then what about all the others? Boston. London. The ones who live in
cities. Are those people real, or what?
A.	Some are real, and some aren't.
Q.	Well are the real ones necessary? or unnecessary?
A.	It depends what you have in mind.
Q.	Shit, I don't have anything in mind.
A.	_We_ do. (70)

Do we condemn Slothrop at some level for not having more in mind? Sure
we do. But I'm not sure that the more serious figures are any more
admirable (Pointsman, Blicero, Tchitcherine come to mind--probably
Enzian comes off best here, along with maybe Geli Tripping and Katje). 

I like very much what rj does in arguing that the "flat" characters are
more "round" because they get us to re-examine what we are looking for
in characters anyway. I don't think the "Menippean satire" idea is
generally enough known to be a commonplace. Could you, rj, elaborate a
bit (off-list if you like) about Derek Barker?

> I think that Pynchon gives us great insight into all of the major
> characters' thought processes. More profitable than the standard and
> somewhat pedestrian critical button-holing of _GR_ as Mennippean satire
> -- character-as-symbolic cartoon (symbolic of what, though?) -- is Derek
> Barker's notion of the 'Politics of Withdrawal' imho, a 'politics' of
> consciousness as much as of conscience with which all of the characters,
> and all humans, must ultimately contend.



Gary Thompson