GRGR(3) 50.31 Love Pointsman Style

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy!

--- s~Z <mcmullenm at vcss.k12.ca.us> wrote:
> rj wrote:
> > 
> > s~Z wrote:
> > >
> > He's cruising the bus station in order to pick up
> one or more of
> > Spectro's discharged patients who are still
> shell-shocked, right?

(Schnitt)

 This passage seems like an externalized narrator
> taking us inside
> Pointsman's consciousness and making us see through
> his eyes, perhaps
> more inclusively than even Pointsman himself can
> see. If it remained in
> third person we'd be watching Pointsman in the bus
> station going about
> and thinking about his business.  Reading it in
> second person I had the
> experience of 'being' Pointsman and had no image of
> him in my
> consciousness. All I saw was the scene and
> Pointsman's internal
> apperception of it. As to whether or not this is the
> text addressing my
> complacency...I don't know about that. Since the
> narrator is describing
> Pointsman in a way that goes more deeply into his
> psyche than Pointsman
> himself is able to do, perhaps it evokes the same in
> the reader.
> Points to things inside us that are disowned and
> about which we are
> complacent. At the very least it sucks me more
> deeply and intensely into
> the character of Pointsman.
> 

I agree to a point.  It has never occurred to me that this passage
might be a description of Pointsman creeping about after discharged
"foxes".  I've read it as a fantasy that Pynchon *assigns* to the
reader, rather than to the dreamlife of Pointsman alone. 

For what little it's worth, 

Mark

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