GRGR(24)Re: That Little Package

[Seb Thirlway]

From: jporter <jp4321 at idt.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org <pynchon-l at waste.org>


>>Does anyone else think that the little package Slothrop picks
up on p.
>>531 could contain the S-Geraet? We know the Springer is
interested in
>>it, and I was wondering because of the last words on 531: "and
the smell
>>of... *of*..."

[snip]
>
>I think that the package is a figure for the manuscript of GR.
Springer is
>just the one to leap out of the two dimensional space of the
text and hawk
>it around to publishers. All of the characters seem to be
extensions of
>trp, in one way or another, and quite self-consciously so. [I
hope that's
>not too simplistic for your tastes.]

No, I agree.  Isn't this (or section 23, but I would say that
wouldn't I) TRP's "Fuck It....Fickt es" (where does that come
from - later or earlier, I can't remember).  I don't quite agree
"_all_ the characters", because some of them, though not
Slothrop, go on having some kind of normal existence as
characters, that connects to the way they were before - I'm
thinking of Geli and Enzian.
That's the strange thing about Slothrop: we never hear his "Fuck
it", and I can't pin down exactly when he stops being interested
in the S-Gerat.  I thought it was something to do with Greta
(spent a lot of time wondering about this, because, in line with
what TRP feeds us up to this point, I've always still hoped that
Tyrone would get to the Holy Centre - or get to it in the terms
he set himself before) but I've got no idea really.  TRP just
casts Slothrop loose.

 Goll, Blicero- even Pointsman- have
>executive qualities necessary for "authorship." TRP satirizes
his own
>efforts, as he forces TS to confront the reality of his own,
semi-animate,
>origins. I recognize that such an interpretation is akin to
kicking over
>the table on which the chess board rests, but hasn't TRP invited
us to do
>just that?

That's exactly what Slothrop does, though he never articulates
it - it's not pointed out that he's found a meta-solution (unlike
Katje with her midnight escape).  Though as you say, is it
Slothrop or TRP doing the kicking?

>
>Of course, the package could contain instructions for some new
weapon or
>counter-weapon, promising to provide, through genetic, neuro and
>nanotechnology, the balance of power previously provided in the
post-War
>world by the wedding of The Bomb and The Rocket. The Bomb and
The Rocket
>have produced benefits, after all. Unless one chooses to focus
only on
>Dora, Hiroshima and the increasing need for social control
mandated by the
>ability to obliterate the world.... then again, the package
might be just
>be another screenplay.


Don't know what it is about the way that whole episode is
presented (perhaps it's Slothrop's total indifference to what
might be in the package that drives the point home), but the
message I get is "don't know what's in it, and you'll never
know".  or maybe you don't want to know...and this doesn't matter
anymore.  There's a sad note of resignation that comes into thte
book around here, when before the focus was always on the
possibiity of finding out, if you look hard enough: whatever
happens to you, there is that Kirghiz Light (Holy Centre,
nerve-centre of the Rocket-cartel, one true reading of the Text)
waiting ahead, and then you'll get IN, and all this time spent
OUTside looking to get in will have been worth it.
I don't think the package can contain anything offering promise.
That's not the way the book is going IMO.  Whatever happened to
all that delicious paranoia?  Enzian's trip while on the
motorbike is the loveliest bit of paranoia in the book -
EVERYTHING, even destruction, is connected and planned to the
last fragment, and if you don't understand it now, well, it was
all planned, so out there somewhere is the Plan and you just
might find it.  Paranoia promises.  What's the consequence of
this illumination for Enzian?  Nothing - just "too much speed,
must cut down".

[snip]
> I think that the invisible agency so expertly "persuading"
Tyrone to
>descend the Echelons in THIS episode is the undisguised author
exerting-
>and demonstrating as he exerts- the necessity for and existence
of control.
>And it's not just the control necessary for writing readable
novels, but
>also, the existence of Control as an Independent Agency at work
in the
>world, beyond the ability of anyone to conceptualize and control
for their
>own conscious or unconscious purposes, exept indirectly, say, by
writing
>and reading novels. I won't mention budget appropriations.


Control deglamorised.  How many times in GR is someone
controlled, not by lurid, possibly existent, scarcely visible
cartels, chains of hidden causality coming down through the
generations, in general, occult (in the general sense) forces,
but by someone at least probably human threatening violence on a
human, punch on the arm, stamp on the hand scale?  I think this
is the only instance in the whole book.

>No
>shinola- just honest shit.

Honest shit, honest control.  It's not fun anymore.  Control
isn't out there anymore, hidden somewhere, leaving teasing little
spoors for TRP and his characters to pick up and roll around
their minds, wondering whether perhas, someday, they might put it
all together and KNOW - control is just control small c, it's
being forced down a ladder in the dark by the threat of pain and
injury.

They they all were wondering who or what was in control, why
weren't they free, and then the worst joke of all comes along:
which Pirate was more free, the Pirate who wondered whether he
was, who could be made to have other people's dreams or ejaculate
on demand at someone's whim, or this one who's just smacked
headlong into a real constraint, one he can't do anything about
because it's nothing to do with Them, it just is...

"But he understands where he is, now.  It will be possibly, after
all, to die in obscurity, without having helped a soul: without
love, despised, never trusted, never vindicated - to stay down
among the Preterite, his poor honour lost, impossibly to locate
or to redeem."  (544)

This is all a bit hard, just when I'd got into the swing of that
Paranoia.  Paaaaaaaa......raaaa....... NOYYYIIA!  (all together
now, one last goodbye).

(great post)



seb