Gottfried & Blicero

[Dave Monroe]

But what to make of the following speech of Blicero's?

"Can you feel in your body how trongly 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 ... and, so
that the infectioin may be more certain, Death in its ingenuity has contrived to
make the father and son beautiful to each other as Life has made male and female
... oh Gottfried of course yes you are beautiful to me but I'm dying ... I want
to get through it as honestly as I can, and your immortality rips at my
heart--can't you see why I might want to destroy that, oh that stupid clarity in
your eyes ... when I see you in the morning and evening ranks, so open, so ready
to take my sickness in and shelter it, shelter it inside your own little ignorant
love...." (V723/B843-4)

Death associated with homosexuality (and cf. that "sterile grace" in the
paragraph before), and, specifically, incestual homosexuality, Life associated
with heterosexuality.  But that "infection," of course, GR is pre-AIDS
(indentified, and identified with homosexuality, ca. 1981?), but that
y-chromosome, perchance?  Reminds me of a paper titled "The Inheritance Pattern
of Death" in The Journal of Irreproducible Results, but ... but, then again,
doesn't necessarily, primarily seem to be a physical affliction here, as
Gottfried is "so open, so ready to take [Blicero's] sickness in and shelter it,"
so ... but do also note the end of Part 3, "In this latest War, death was no
enemy, but a collaborator" (V616/B718) ... gender, sexuality, death, warfare and
Gravity's Rainbow--anyone?


Andy wrote:

> My problem with this is that there is negative reference after reference to
> male homosexuality

> stereotyping

> Gottried and Weissman are "lovers whose genitals are consecrated to shit, to
> endings..."

> To write "the life-cry of that love [homosexuality in the trenches] has long
> since hissed away into no more than this bitchy and idle faggotry" at that time
> is probably not coincidental.