GRGR(24)Re: That Little Package

[jporter]

Jeremy asked:

>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*..."
>
>Jody, was your last post hinting that the smell under consideration is
>that of TS's sperm?
>


Hi Jeremy-

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.] 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? At our own peril, sure- but what other options are there in a
world dominated by "Modern Analysis" which would linearize and rationalize
the twisted spiralling feedback of our own evolution.

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.

TS is forced down the Anubian Ladders against his natural American upward
climbing tendencies, as witnessed at the casino, chasing the cladistic
little demon. That demon seemed a shoe-in for the selection demon in the
"thought experiment" of James Clerk Maxwell, demonstrating the impossiblity
of perpetual motion machines of the second kind. Ironically, the demon also
embodies the hope of us all- in the manner of Teilhard de Chardin- who long
for directionality, or some other hint of purposful design, within the
process of evolution. Those more rationally inclined would have us deny the
presence of even a blind demon at the core of the Darwinian process of
Natural Selection. To them, everything is accidental, chance, random.
Entropy, however, would still be an essential ingredient, as the source of
imperfect reproduction, and the natural variation on which selection
operates.

A more modern Cladistic Analysis of evolution, considering doplhin's fin
and cephalopod's eye- as some commonly cited examples- suggests that, on
the mesoscopic scale, some process is at work causing such Convergences.
Life may dress itself in different styles but similar problems seem to
inspire remarkably similar solutions. Convergence suggests not only a
hidden unity or identity at work- the nucleic acid/carbon bond basis of all
terrestial life- but also, a set of universal boundary conditions, perhaps
"frozen" into existence a micro second after the big bang, forever
dictating which basic quanta and their aggregations might be capable of
allowing the emergence of quality, evolution and self-definition. Is the
same process, the ultimate purpose of which seems always just beyond our
ken, responsible for the convergence of culture and technology, as well?

Pirate, in the hour after dawn, was bearing bananas as he descended the
twisted helical ladder into the the warmth of civilization's kitchen. We've
come a long way since the dawn. Stately Plump Buck Mulligan mirrored the
offering by blessing us with blade and bowl, as he spiralled down the
winding stair of his friend's rented tower...

 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.

Bianca is dead and dangles in front of TS's nose, where he cannot help but
pick up the scent of both her shit and his sperm. It is a cloacal moment,
and as such, harkens back, via nasal telegraph, to an earlier time in the
history of life on this planet when there was no shinola- before the zero
of the present "aggregation," and its dependence upon artifacts... No
shinola- just honest shit. Perhaps the perfumer responsible for that "note"
added a hint of Imipolex- or some distillation of factors used to condition
Slothrop by Jamf, a whiff of the residua of Bianca's and Slothrop's earlier
coupling, mixed now with Bianca's waste. The unseen agent of control has
forced TS down into the dynamo of the Anubis- where deathwish and murderous
impulse covort- to retrieve the discarded product of their sterile
conjugation. Certainly the package, like the book itself, is the product of
design.

jody

 "Dixon having already spied, beneath her layers of careful Decrepitude (as
he will later tell Mason), a shockingly young Woman hard at work..."