GRGR(11): Webley Silvernail/a little on narration

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Does anyone else think of American Romance here? Hawthorne
and company? Does anyone attribute the ironic strategies of
this narrator to Eliot? Doesn't Pynchon's use of film owe
more to Hawthorne ("HSG" in particular) than Hollywood?

TF  

> Mike Crowley wrote:
> 
> One of my favorite scenes of the novel is Webley
> Silvernail's song and dance number with the lab rats &
> mice, especially his remarks to the rodents afterwards: "I
> would set you free, if I knew how.  But it isn't free out
> here[...]" ( 230).  But how does one make sense of it?  I
> guess it's easy enough to naturalize the whole thing--the
> jailhouse slang of 229 is Silvernail, movie watcher,
> imagining the kind of dialogue the rodents would speak;
> thinking of an overhead German camera angle leads him to
> imagine the similar perspective in Busby Berkeley-type
> musicals and how he and the mice would look to an
> angel-eye lab worker.  Naturalize it further?  The rodents
> "come out of their enclosures, in fact, grown to Webley
> Silvernail-size (though none of the lab people seem to be
> noticing) to dance him down the long aisles[...]"  Later,
> "They have had their moment of freedom."  Does Silvernail
> let some of the rodents out of their cages, get down on
> the floor and play with them for a few minutes,
> improvising a little song about their condition (any ideas
> on wht the "popular beat and melody" behind those lyrics
> are?)?  Or is the whole thing just in Silvernail's
> imagination?  Or not even in his imagination, but only the
> narrator's?
>     Maybe these questions aren't all that important, but I
> would like to know what's going on.  And, Silvernail is
> one of the good guys--how does he evolve from this view of
> the world?
>     Of course, the use of film also helps to explain the
> scene; Silvernail is the audiovisual man, thinks in terms
> of German camera angles, sees himself as a guest
> star--this leads me to think he's just imagining the
> scene, that the rodents don't actually get "their moment
> of freedom."  Although, I guess the point of Silvernail's
> speech is that nobody ever gets a moment of freedom, in
> the cage or out.
> 
>     What is "actually" going on in the novel's fictional
> world in this scene (and a ton of others) is also related,
> for me, to questions of the narrator and the narrator's
> control of the narrative.  Molly Hite (in her Ideas of
> Order) describes the narrator in terms of Hugh Kenner's
> "Uncle Charles Principle": the narrator takes on the
> verbal ticks and habits of the character whose point of
> view is being adopted, kind of an idiosyncratic use of
> third person limited narration.  If this is the case, then
> the narrator is kind of surrendering control here to
> Silvernail's mindset.  Of course, I find it just as easy
> to read this section as all from the narrator, making
> Silvernail and the rodents mere puppets made to sing and
> dance for his and our entertainment--the slang from the
> rodent prisoners isn't Silvernail's speculation, but
> either is their thoughts or just the narrator's imaginary
> dialogue; the song is the narrator's, not Silvernail's;
> the other people in the lab don't notice anything because
> nothing unusual is going on.  In the first case, the
> narrator appears very democratic, uncontrolling; in the
> second, he's a bit more fascist.
> 
>     Is the "i'n't it now"--which pretty clearly comes from
> Silvernail's point of view--the same voice as the one
> doing the jailhouse conversation of the mice just before
> it?
> 
> Is there some kind of deep Disney/Fantasia parody that I'm
> not getting going on as the critters "eventually all form
> into the shape of a single giant mouse"?
> 
> Any comments on Webley Silvernail's name?  It's pretty
> cool, for one; maybe a bit hippie-ish, for two.
> 
> 
> [next one's kind of a spoiler if anyone is concerned]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How does Silvernail come to be part of the Counterforce?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> Michael J. Crowley
> ------------------------------
> 10 Park Hall
> crowley at arches.uga.edu