GRGR(9) - Slothrop Meets Grigori

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

David Morris wrote:

> 
> I see Slothrop as Bacchus and as the Hero, Theseus primarily, maybe w/
> aspects of Heracles too:
> 1. Both Theseus and Bacchus were the "husbands" of Venus/Ariadne.
> 2. Bacchus wandered his Zone in madness and drunkenness. And don't forget
> that purple toga.
> 3. Like Pointy and his Minotaur, Slothrop identifies w/ his monster.
> 4. By going for the female "bait" Slothrop unknowingly enters Their maze.

> David Morris


3. Like Pointy and his Minotaur, Slothrop identifies w/ his
monster.

Pointy's quarry #1

Pointy's Quarry

Jessica asks Roger, "Why does he (Pointy) go out and pinch
all his dogs in person." GR.37
Pointy views the war (the "war" here is not simply WWII)
"itself as a laboratory."


Pointsman, Mr./Dr.  Edward W. A. ("Ned"), F.R.C.S. GR.42 is 
introduced on a miserable night's hunt for a dog. He is
accompanied by Roger, Jessica, and an unnamed sentry. Pointy
gets his foot stuck in a toilet bowl, he has a net ("like a
radar antenna"),  he wears a "Balaclava Helmet and when
Jessica sees his "two eyes of no particular color glaring
out the window of a Balaclava Helmet," she is reminded of "a
mediaeval knight wearing a casque." She wonders, "What
CREATURE (my caps) is he possibly here tonight to fight for
his king?" Is he a knight? In Chaucer's "Knight's Tale,"
Theseus is a Duke and "Of Athenes he was lord and
governour." A Russian? His Balaclava helmet is simply a knit
cap, but does it have some connection to the Crimean War, or
a parody reference to Tolsoy's story of that war, wherein
the hero is the truth, or to Tennyson's poem of that war,
The Charge of the Light Brigade? From Jessica again, "She
knows she must not cry: that the vague eyes in the knitted
window won't seek their BEAST (my caps) any more earnestly
for her tears." Roger and Pointy end up under the net
(Pointy with the bowl on his foot and Roger reeling from
ether) and they do not get "Lessie" or what ever Pointy
planned to name his quarry. Roger asks Pointy, "What will
you do for a dog, then." Pointy replies, "Perhaps it's a
sign. Perhaps I should be BRANCHING OUT (my caps)." 

Pontsman ("can only possess the zero and the one") and Roger
Mexico ("survives anyplace in between" or "in the domain of
zero to one") seem to represent opposites-psychological,
ethical, sexual, political, and so on. Roger concludes that
"the doctor wants more than his good will, his
collaboration
..wants HIM (my caps). As one wants a fine
specimen of dog." 

Roger and Jessica take Pointy over to St Veronica to see Dr.
Kevin Spectro, this week's keeper of The Book. The
architectural description of this Gothic complex
(GR.46)--Pointy "melts" into a side entrance-is quite
fantastic and once inside, we observe conversations in the
"annulus of night" about the ethics of experiments involving
Slothrop-"JAMF'S SUBJECT" (my caps).  Spectro refers to his
patients as Foxes. "Pointsman's own FOX (my caps) waits, out
in the city, a PRIZE (my caps) of war." With a near "Fascist
salute" Pointy argues that Slothrop is ONLY ONE MAN (my
caps)," "a classical case," "a perfect MECHANISM (my caps)." 

Pointy's reading of Pavlov's "ideas of the opposite,"
includes perverse eroticism. I have not read Pavlov, but I
doubt that Pointy has a healthy reading of him-"Helping
distinguish pleasure from pain, light from dark, dominance
from submission
starve them, traumatize, shock, castrate
them
weaken this idea of the opposite, and here all at once
is the paranoid patient who would be master, yet now feels
himself a slave
who would be loved, but suffers his world's
indifference." Pointy, "lusts after  PRETTY CHILDREN (my
caps). Innocent runaways at the bus depot, "so artlessly
erotic" are lured home to his "spermy bed." After a failed
night of hunting at the bus station, Pointy ends up with
GRIGORI, but what he really needs, he claims, "is not a DOG,
not an OCTOPUS, but one of your (Spectro's) fine FOXES." 

TBC

TF