GRGR(10): pp. 217 - 220

[Jeremy Osner]

So... what about this passage? From p. 205 to 226 is straight narrative,
except for 217 - 220. Between the point (in Monaco) where Sir Steven
tells Slothrop about the Penis He Thought Was His Own and then next
morning, when Slothrop awakes to find that "suddenly everyone is telling
him things", the narrative moves to England and then Germany. I find it
very difficult to get what is happening in this interlude.

Peter and Leni I hardly know; I am being told led to believe now that
they are in some sense identical to Carroll Eventyr and Nora
Dodson-Truck. Also I am being given new information about Peter's death,
or at least led to believe that I should possess such info. The most I
can make of pp. 218-220 is that in the course of his relationship with
Leni, Peter was involved in an anti-government protest during the course
of which he died. But none of this is stated explicitly and I don't
really know if that is really what's being described. Do others of you
read it the same way or differently?

I'm particularly confused by the paragraph which takes up most of p.
219. I can't for the life of me make out what he's describing. "They are
being pushed back by a line of police" sounds like they are in a crowd
standing on the street, especially since Peter is "trying to keep his
footing" -- unless that's metaphorical. But then in the next sentence,
"industrial towers of the Mark flying away at over a hundred miles an
hour into the background" means they are on a train or in a car; and
"any least mistake ... in the roadbed at this speed and they're done
for" narrows it down to a car. But Leni's thighs are "marked red from
the train seat"! And then they're in a crowd again, on foot. This
collage of images doesn't really come together for me into anything
coherent...

j

--
We seek sex, and are left with two private bodies on a stained bed.
The larger erotic dream, the god, has eluded us. It is so whenever,
moving out of ourselves, we look for extensions of ourselves.

V. S. Naipaul
_The Mimic Men_