Gottfried & Blicero

[Dave Monroe]

Now here's a few questions for any and all, which might or might not have been
taken up here already, but ... but any thoughts on Pynchon's, Gravity's
Rainbow's use of homosexuality?  Blicero and Gottfried seem to be the only major
characters with a homosexual relationship in GR (I phrase this as such as I'm
not so sure that that's the same thing as saying that they are the only
homosexual major characters in GR), unless one counts Margherita and Bianca as
well.  Which only reinforces the association of homosexuality with incest,
pedophilia, S&M/B&D, and, ultimately, death.   Not exactly unstereotypical
associations.

Even in that orgy on the Anubis (V466-8/B543-5, and note the name of the ship,
though that sex'n'death, eros'n'thanatos association is in full force across the
board here, I guess), the only seemingly homosexual couplings (which often
involve more than a mere couple ...) involve Thanatz (thanatos, "death"), that
"tall Swiss divorcee" "lash[ing]" "her friend's" "bared breast," and, er, a
"retired Dutch banker" "jerk[ing] off" one of the Wends ... Am reminded here of
the title of a paper by Leo Bersani and, I think, Ulysse Dutoit, "Is the Rectum
a Grave?"   But it's been a while for me on such issues, so ... but it IS, esp.
given that "virus," tempting to read this passage in light of AIDS, isn't it?
Anachronistic, but ...

Interestingly, Stephen Paul Miller, in his The Seventies Now: Culture as
Surveillance, when he briefly touches on Pynchon, touches on GR in re: the Gay
Rights movement, of all things, kinda sorta wish I'd been paying more attention,
but ... well, will report back on it.  But I'm not sure how, or if, even
Pynchon's way of ... complicating things mitigates what might well be the
employment of such stereotypes, prejudices, even.  Again, any thoughts, on any
of this, any one?  Not necessarily trying either to save or condemn Pynchon,
Gravity's rainbow on this, can only be part of his time(s), its context(s), no
matter how much he, it chafes at, problematizes, troubles it (them) ...


jbor wrote:

> How premonitory that passage describing their coupling seems now, that
> epiphany about homosexuality and preterition:
>
>      Blicero's seed, sputtering into the poisoned manure of his bowels . .
>       . it is waste, yes, futility . . . but [...] there have to be these
>      too, lovers whose genitals *are* consecrated to shit, to endings, to
>      the desperate nights in the streets where connection proceeds out of
>      all personal control, proceeds or fails, a gathering of fallen -- as
>      many in acts of death as in acts of life [...]
>          (722.1)
>
> And afterwards, Blicero to Gottfried:
>
>      "Can you feel in your body how strongly I have infected you with my
>      dying? I was meant to: when a certain time has come, I think that we
>      are all meant to. Fathers are carriers of the virus of death, and sons
>      are the infected [...]
>          (723.30)
>
> The spectre of AIDS hovers, palpable, impossible. What must Pynchon think of
> those words today?