Pointy's quarry #2

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Pointy's Quarry #2

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."



Pointy has excluded from his persuasion "the probabilities
of Mexico's statistical domain of zero to one.  This
influences his view of history. Pointy's repulsive contempt
for humanity and his rejection of  Roger's statistical
arguments, do not prevent him from wanting Roger.  Pointy
has been in the labyrinth for thirteen years-since age 28.
Roger is 30. Pointy's perverse need to control the innocent
and helpless, excites his shameful eroticism and he
describes Roger as "Innocent as a child, perhaps
unaware-perhaps-that in his play he wrecks the elegant rooms
of history, threatens the idea of cause and effect itself."
Pointy begins to resemble Melville's Ahab. Melville's grand
creation is constructed from his genius and makes sport of
his personal enemies and the
philosophical/literary/political positions he finds
intolerable. He draws from lots of literary figures to
construct his megalomaniac, including  Milton's Satan, The
Faust legend-both Marlowe's and Goethe's-and Shakespeare's
Lear and Richard III. At the suggestion of someone (Mexico,
Spectro, ??) that  he take a dog home to live with him-might
help him empathize with his patients, Pointy brings a dog
home and as  Pointy names dog's according to his
whim---though he can not live with for long, because it can
not reverse its behavior-- he names the dog Gloucester.
Pynchon loves the Richard plays, in fact his YOU of GR has
much in common with Shakespeare's YOU of Richard II. These
characters--Ahab, Gloucester, Milton's Satan (as every
Romantic knows), are very real and very human. Is Pointy? 

 Pointy as a dog (the irony) named Gloucester.

"Pointsman's season of despair was well upon him. He came to
understand that the great continental pincers was to be,
after all, a success. That this war, this State he'd come to
feel himself a citizen of, was to be adjourned and
reconstituted as a peace-and that, professionally speaking,
he'd hardly gotten a thing out of it." GR.75 

Enter RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, solus

  GLOUCESTER. Now is the winter of our discontent
    Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
    And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
    Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
    Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
    Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
    Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
    Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front,
    And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
    To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
    He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
    To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
    But I-that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
    Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass-
    I-that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
    To strut before a wanton ambling nymph- 
    I-that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
    Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
    Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
    Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
    And that so lamely and unfashionable
    That dogs bark at me as I halt by them-
    Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
    Have no delight to pass away the time,
    Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
    And descant on mine own deformity.
    And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
    To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
    I am determined to prove a villain
    And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
    Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
    By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
    To set my brother Clarence and the King
    In deadly hate the one against the other;
    And if King Edward be as true and just
    As I am subtle, false, and treacherous, 
    This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up-
    About a prophecy which says that G
    Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
    Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.
TBC
TF