GRGR(4) Slothrop's Sodium Amytal fantasy

[Jeremy Osner]

Herewith, a reasonably close reading of pp. 62-71 (assuming I can keep
it up throughout...)

The fantasy is introduced by Slothrop's reply to the doctor (Spectro?)
asking if he can see anything: "no, not *see* exactly..."; then we are
thrust abruptly into Slothrop's consciousness.

The first scene takes place in a night club in Roxbury, which I'm
assuming to be a "colored" section of Boston. Before we get there we
have an image of an elevated train (not necessarily one that Slothrop is
riding on; there is an implication a bit later on that he has a car;
maybe this is outside the club or something he saw on his way there) and
a song. The night club has strong sensory impressions associated with
it; "Black faces, white tablecloth, gleaming *very sharp knives*...
tobacco and "gage" smoke richly blended,... tart as wine..." The
interviewing doctor has his last line here, and the rest of the episode
is given over entirely to Slothrop's fantasy. (A note on that last line:
the doctor says "That was 'sho nuff', Slothrop?" -- that really pounds
home for me the clinical setting that the fantasy is taking place
within. Why?)

The club is a black club frequented by a lot of white Harvard students
-- they don't really belong there, as is made clear by the following: "A
woman turns to look at him [Slothrop] from a table. Her eyes tell him,
in an instant, what he is." Immediately after this realization the scene
shifts to the bathroom upstairs, where he is throwing up and drops his
"jive accessory" harmonica in the toilet.

What is the song "Cherokee"? Pynchon makes quite a bit of this being the
song that's playing when Slothrop goes on his submarine excursion -- it
means nothing to me. Has anyone heard it? It makes the white students
and their dates look like "dolled up redskins" (actually the "moving
rose lights" do; but it seems to me pretty closely connected to the song
that's playing) -- it's "one more lie about white crimes." Could this
tie in with what Matt Weiner was talking about like 2 years ago
regarding smallpox-infested blankets being a lie about white crimes? And
how does it fit in to the scene? Suddenly we're headed down to NYC,
"drive fast maybe get there for the last set", which I took as implying
that Slothrop has a car, but I guess it needn't, and we're treated to a
very melodic tribute to "Yardbird" Parker. It seems to me like Pynchon
is saying the performance of Cherokee that's going on downstairs from
Slothrop is an instance of the new style of music influenced by Parker.
Or something?

Back to Slothrop. He's contemplating going down the toilet after his
harmonica, but worried about leaving his ass open prey for hypothetical
butt-fucking Negroes. We don't see him make the decision to go ahead
after the harp, but in the next sentence he's on his way down the pipes
and a group of Negroes is preparing to rape him. Some thoughts: he
spends a bit of time meditating on shoeshine boy "Red"'s actual name
being Malcolm (reference to Mr. X?) because "Red" answered when the
principal attacker said "Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!" Why talcum? I
never really thought of using talcum in conjunction with anal sex... Any
ways, Slothrop escapes handily and makes his way down the plumbing.
(Reminiscent, to me anyway, of Alice's fall down the rabbit hole.)

It took me many readings to figure this out and I'm still not sure about
it, but I think the next scene change comes at the beginning of the
third graph on p. 66. The flush has come and gone and he has just
realized that "he hasn't felt the touch of a hard wall [which you would
expect plenty of in a sewer] since he started to tumble, if that indeed
is what he's doing [?]." Now he's in an open space in a watery light,
looking for "contacts". He's still plagued by wayward shit from the
previous scene. Nothing happens but there is a dark sense of foreboding
as we move into scene 4.

Which is perhaps the weirdest part of the whole sequence, with the
bizarre ongoing gag about there being "one of each of everything". "Red
River Valley" gives an opening for a jab at New Deal communists on p.
68; why oh why does he say "round black iron in the middle of the night"
out of nowhere? We meet Crutchfield (Crouchfield) and his little pard
Whappo -- Magenta and green make a cameo appearance -- visions of
carnality -- then a dialog which I think takes place between Slothrop
and the interviewing doctor, concerning whether there is only one
instance of every type or not, who is real, who is necessary. Back to
Roxbury suddenly for the obligatory you-never-did-the-Kenosha-Kid
reference.

--
Don' take life so serious son, it ain't nohow permanent.
--Porky Pine