DT the linguist

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Later DT and Pirate will have a conversation that we almost
to need to flash forward to, but I we might want to consider
this linguist thus far first. Why did they send a linguist,
a loser, why does Pynchon need a linguist here? A Sir that
speaks 33 languages? Chapter 79 of Melville's MD is named
"The Praire," and is more important to M&D's Praire and to
Praire of VL, but in that chapter Melville has a Sir, that
speaks 30 languages, and he is contrasted with "unlettered
Ishmael." Frye explains the professional losers of satire in
his Anatomy, and here we have the linguist, so important as
we are heading into rocket/text and NAMES--Slothrop will be
named in a serendipitous, spontaneous, magical, synergy of
minds/language. But here Slothrop is being stripped of his
"identity" and given an english "personality" as part of the
pavlovian/freudian paranoia plan of Pointy and company. He
is being instructed by DT, on the technical of the V2.
Slothrop inveigles DT into playing "price" where the object,
like playing quarter (an american? drinking game)is to lose
and get drunk. DT gets drunk, and with "an unmistakable aura
of the employee and loser" he spills some of the beans. DT
(while sober) has analogized the old norse rune with the
coil, and he will go on making these connections, but to
what end? "The Goths, much earlier, had used a circle with a
dot in the center." Then with Pynchon's irony ( and as
usual, the irony is not as evident to us until later) DT
continues, "This broken line evidently dates from a time of
discontinuities, tribal fragmenting perhaps alienation.."
Then he makes another connection or analogy, "analogous in a
social sense to the development of an independent ego by the
very young child, you see...." Independent ego? Oh slothrop,
poor boy. We know, or we think we know more than slothrop,
but do we? Slothrop's reading Plas--see rj on this one--is
too much isn't it, but what can we understand from DT's
,multiple analogies, references and metaphors? DT, like
Melville's linguist, seems to comprehend it all, but what
can he knowingly (w/o Pynchon's displaced irony) tell us,
tell slothrop with his comprehensive intellect, that the
popular war time expression is...and phallic comedy (oh
boy!) dates to the Greeks? What does it mean w/o Pynchon's
irony? Like the linguist in MD, Sir DT is a perfect choice
here. He is a walking collection of analogies, Connections,
and his a fitting "tutor" for our  Paranoid Puritan. In fact
this seems to be Slothrop's break through, "did the choice
him because of all those word-smitten Puritans dangling off
of Slothrp's family tree?" ANd he is a loser/employee. So
Slothrop's game is perfect, for in the game of Prince, "One
doesn't win. One loses." The game behind the game is showing
its hand--out of the clouds? Seated at the table, the
players are the preterite, playing against the house of
god--THEY. The game is fixed, "the odds belong to the past,"
but not to Eden and A&E and the forbidden fruit,  but to the
Forbidden Wing, where control is the original sin and god
has has juice running down his chin.


"Young Mason thinks he is about to eat it." M&D.206