GRGR(6) - section 8

[rj]

Neil:
> 
> "Last chance for a section eight"
> 
> Was the whole Roseland/Crutchfield episode influenced by Slothrop's
> desire for a section eight?

The motif's so tied up to Catch-22 and M*A*S*H* that I didn't even
consider it. But, assuming Slothrop was to get a discharge, what good
what that do him? I took it as a self-conscious and deliberately ironic
aside -- Slothrop objectifying himself, soliloquizing and ironizing his
self-pity again: 'Öy-öy-öy! I'm such a schlemihl! (And don't I know it.
Ah me, ah my.)'

Actually, one of the things I think might be going on in the Roseland
episode is that Slothrop is repressing what actually happened that
night, that indeed Malcolm's licorice bazooka found its target, which
would explain the pumping 11/12 "rhythm of some traditional American
tune" which interrupts the dreamscape, a tune which would have been very
out of place at the particular venue described. (67)

Terrance:
> Slothrop
> is not even human,
> is he? He is more like V. or Carl Barrington from The Secret
> Integration.
> Slothrop is a golem, a mediator character that drives the
> "plot."

Slothrop's hardly a "golem" in the novel. There's just so much depth to
Slothop's character -- what he thinks and says and does in an enormous
range of situations -- it's just that he's totally self-involved. I can
hear him and see him when he's mimicking his buddy Mucker-Maffick, for
example, when he can't quite capture or express the experience of the
moment of annihilation he so fears:

"Who's pretending?" lighting a cigarette, shaking his forelock through
the smoke, "jeepers, Tantivy, listen, I don't want to upset you but . .
. I mean I'm four year's overdue's what it is, it could happen *any
time*, the next second, right, just suddenly  . . . shit . . . just
zero, just nothing . . . and . . ." (25)

Carl Barrington is an imaginary friend. Slothrop's 'real' as
Shit'N'Shinola. There's an enormous difference between them in terms of
both characterisation and narrativization. They are not comparable.

best