GRGR(6) - The Empire's Suicide

[David Morris]

I think you've got it right.  The black tenor is a "minor surrealism," an
example of dislocation which is a symptom of the countless other "real" acts
"mindlessly" taken, leading to the ultimate self-destruction of "the System"
which seeks to break the serpent's cycle.

The quote "it is not death that separates these incarnations, but paper:
paper specialties, paper routines. The War, the Empire, will expedite such
barriers between our lives." leads me to go back to page 28.
--------
(28.2) timberland [...] converted acres at a clip to paper - toilet paper,
banknote stock, newsprint - a medium or ground for shit, money and the Word.
[...] the three American truths, powering the American Mobility
--------
The continuity described in the transition of toothpaste tubes into war
ships is sort of heart warming.  The touch and tastes, shared by the
thousands in the morning or before sleep implies an aura of humanity gracing
the tubes.  But this shared human experience is then channeled into a
warship's hull.  And we learn that the War/Empire wants to avoid any form of
"folk-consciousness," and uses paper as its means.  What good is paper?: It
is a "ground" for Shit (waste), Money (greed), and the Word (propaganda).

Gary Thompson:
>I don't see race as linked to suicide here but to surrealism
>(the presence of this Jamaican counter-tenor in the middle of
>the English countryside singing a carol in Latin and German in
>the middle of a crowd of servicemen smothering farts on Christmas
>eve). I had a different reason for P's calling it suicide--the
>Empire, which extends well beyond the Third Reich or Anglo-
>American Empire, back to Rome, ahead to the generalized bureaucratic
>world that seems to me to be P's main target in _GR_, connects to
>what might be called the novel's ecological theme. Point of ref.
>is Kekule's dream--
>
>"Kekule dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail . . . The
>Serpent that announces, 'The World is a closed thing, cyclical,
>resonant, eternally returning,' is to be delivered into a system
>whose only aim is to _violate_ the Cycle. [my snip for space reasons]"
>(412) The passage continues, of course.
>
>Back to the Advent section, my ears pick up about 130-- "and listen
>. . . listen: this is the War's evensong, the War's canonical hour,
>and the night is real. [. . .] it is not death that separates these
>incarnations, but paper: paper specialties, paper routines. The War,
>the Empire, will expedite such barriers between our lives."
>(This too goes on.)
[snip]