GRGR(4) - Slothrop's Rape

[DudiousMax at aol.com]

Dudes,		
             Well, if it's not the 3rd person omniscient narrator, who's 
voice is it??  Is it Slothrop's?  Is it Pointsman's?  Is it Mexico's?  
Spectro's? Do we have a clue?  And if it is not the author's voice, then 
whose voice is it?  Does it matter at all?  I think it matters a lot.
              And if it is the Author's voice, then when he says Slothrop 
escaped with "his virgin asshole preserved"  is he being ironic?  And if he's 
being ironic, why does he bother with the next sentence?  Fully quoted:
               "Now some folks might say whew, thank God for that, and others 
moaning a little, aw shucks, but Slothrop doesn't say much of anything cause 
he didn't feel much of anything."  Because he repressed it?  Because it 
didn't happen in the first place?  Because he's stonyonyoned?
               Is there an indicator that the author is being ironical?  
Means the opposite to what he writes?  Means something other than what he 
writes?
                I think he is titillating the reader.  I think he makes the 
scene a highly charged near miss.  I think he focuses the reader on all the 
sexual stuff (None of which is real. It is a drug induced trance, we 
shouldn't forget.  If he gets raped it is inside a drugged fantasy.) and all 
the disgusting fantasy shit, so he can drop the political assassination stuff 
on us, hardly noticeable, a grace note at the margin of consciousness.  He 
does give us the mention of JFK later in the SAME bleeping PARAGRAPH.  And 
still a page or two later the sentence, "And only one president, and one 
assassin, and one election."
                This is the essential Pynchon, feinting, diverting our 
attention, and then dropping some item on us that is the telling detail.  
IMHO, the issue of assassins and assassinations takes up more of the novel, 
as the band plays on, than the question of whether or not Slothrop was raped 
(in his fantasy).
                 This is one of TRP's signature tricks.  And he means for it 
to push the hot button in his readers.  We all react, on one level or 
another, to Slothrop's wild ride.  It's a GOTCHA!  So we won't notice the 
other minor details that turn out to be major. That's what I think is going 
on.  Foreground/background reversal.  And this one proves to be a startling 
example.  But what do I know?  I'm only...
                                      Max