GRGR(11): That Creature--There!--See it?

[Michael Crowley]

This is the version I meant to send:

fqmorris at hotmail.com wrote:

> "Just paranoid vision"????
> 
> >From my point of veiw, it is unproductive to focus on whether a vision
is 
> "really there,"  which is related to the need to nail down from which
mind 
> the vision is emanating.  These are minor issues.  I think it's much
more 
> important to understand what is the message, the content of the vision.
Let 
> go and fly.
> 
> David Morris

I completely agree, of course, that understanding the the message and
content of the vision is what's important.  Yes, I guess I'm
being a bit nit-picky and reductive in trying to read this scene.
However,
I figured if I felt the need, this was the best forum in which to have it
satisfied.  And more importantly, if I'm not sure whether the song and
dance
number is really occurring, occurring in a character's mind, or only the
narrator's imaginings, then how confident can I be that I understand the
meaning of the vision?
    Not that my goal is to say, Okay, we can reduce these different
possibilities to one particular certainty, that X happens on March 21 at
exactly 5:31 GDST, or whenever.  All of Pynchon's work subverts such a
manner of reading.   But I would like to make sure I can see as many of
the
different possible ways of explaining this and other scenes--construct a
spectrum of possible interpretations on which to base my understanding.

Which brings us around again to the message and content of the
vision--humorous and joyful, on the one hand; tragic and depressing, on
the
other.

Paul Mackin writes: "In the end it's about setting the preterite free
which of course can't be done--there is no way to do it. "

That seems to be the lesson Silvernail draws from the vision and he
certainly feels it applies to himself.  Yet a few hundred pages later,
he's
(perhaps) helping Katje (535), then working for the Counterforce (620).
Helping the preterite is always futile, but the good guys in the novel
seem
to eventually conclude that even if it's futile, it's still
orthwhile.  --Or is the Silvernail's vision more along the lines of animal
rights activists who release lab animals from their cages only to have
them
starve?


		

Mike Crowley
------------
crowley at arches.uga.edu