GRGR(6) - section 8

[Meg Larson]

Rj, replying to Terrance:

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)

Me:
I agree:  Tyrone's as real as anything/anyone else in the novel, and just as
hard to get a handle on, too.  One of my favorite telling moments in the
novel, a moment that lends humanness to Slothrop, is when he reads of
Tantivy's death in the paper, which is coming up in a future section.  Like
the passage that Terrance quotes above, it's the small moments that, at
least for me, make Tyrone "real."

A-and we haven't even gotten to Byron the Bulb--more on that later.

Enjoying the discussion immensely,
M.