GRGR(7) Pointy's "sentiments d'emprise" 136-144

[rj]

138.28 "half of St Veronica's hospital in the morning smashed roofless"

Pointy knew it would happen. Or, subconsciously, he believes he knew. If
not his superstitious "dialectic of the Book", then the fact that
Slothrop "was with his Darlene, only a few blocks from St. Veronica's,
two days before." (144.2) And thus the weak stimulus, Gwenhidwy's
"small, reluctant tap" is in fact something more monstrous, more
nightmarish in Pointy's conscience than the bomber squadrons which don't
wake him. Trying to rationalise it all thus: talking to himself in the
third person, addressing himself formally ("one") to further objectify
himself and his role, conjecturing that the weak stimulus = strong
response causality is to be expected, that his "bolt upright" awakening
to the knock is just the ultraparadoxical phase, convincing himself that
his Nobel will be for all seven of them, "the ones who didn't make it",
and avowing that Slothrop is "the monster" which he must vanquish "in
fairness" to Spectro; these are the symptoms of Pointy's denial. He'd
discussed the connection between Slothrop and the bombs with Spectro
himself. (48-49) He'd begun watching Tyrone straight after his release.
(83, 114.16) Repression. Guilt. Pointy knew. (139.2-4) 

The better word than "sinister" (is Pointy left-handed?) which haunts
him is "Foxes", whispered across the aether by Spectro's ghost. For Ned
did get his, after all. And, Spectro paid the ultimate price for it.
Pointy's penance is to persevere with Spectro's Outside/Inside-as-one
theory -- "He owes Spectro that much." (144.7) Fittingly, Slothrop's
cortex will provide the clinical test of this thesis. (And so, either
way, the evidence will be conveniently destroyed.) 

Pointy writes: "*We must never lose control*." But, more than anything,
he has been struggling to control his own conscience throughout the
sequence. Pointy's waking journal (envisaged as commemorating his own
noble, life-affirming genius like The Book itself, perhaps, the
'official version' of his experimental research) represents the
conscious repression of what his subconscious knows as truth: it is the
Dr Frankensteins who are the real "monsters" -- Pavlov, Jamf, himself. 

best