GRGR(4) - Surreality (was Slothrop's Rape)

[davemarc]

> From: David Morris <davidm at hrihci.com>
> 
> I think it's important to determine if Slothrop's rape and the whole
Roxbury
> nightclub scene is a memory or a fantasy.  

It's also worth noting that the scene may transcend the two.  One of the
goals of surrealism is to create situations in which contradictions seem to
be perceived as such.  The toilet bowl episode strikes me as a textbook
example of surrealism, or hallucinatory writing.  I can also imagine it
rendered quite effectively (and bizarrely) by Robert Crumb.

It's beneficial to scrutinize GR for all sorts of intentional, conscious
allusions, but I think it'd be doing a disservice to the book to disregard
the possibility (in my mind, the probability) that portions of it might
have been created through surrealist techniques like automatic writing,
trance writing, and the transcription of dreams and hallucinations.

d.