V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams

[jbor]

> ----------
> (63) The rest was only impersonation and dream
> ----------

I guess the main difference between the two is that an impersonation is a
conscious and deliberate deception whereas dream wells from the subconscious
and is not volitional, as you note. That old Jungian collective unconscious
thing is possibly what Kai was alluding to vis a vis 'shared dreams'.

> "The rest" is part of a logic-equation.

There are the veiled references to Porpy in old Stencil's journal's, and
"the rest" referenced here is what comprises young Stencil's embellishments.
Without access to the journals it is impossible for the reader of the novel
to know which is which; we can only surmise (thus, indeterminacy). We can
make some fairly good guesses, both from the way young Stencil describes
what is there ("veiled references"), and from what we might imagine an 1890s
British spy's journal to read like (i.e. a stereotype).

snip
>
> Who narrates the "foreword" of Chapter Three?  Is it young Stencil?
> Possibly.  If so he narrates his own story, third person, which fits.  To
> whom does he speak?  Is it to us readers?  It might also be to himself.  Is
> this his apologia?

The staged similes which open the section are certainly ornate and pompous
enough to be Stencil's, and it is very tempting to read it that way. Later
(Chapter 7) Eigenvalue the psychodontist will become Herbert's confessor, so
these are good questions to be asking. (I'm not sure that they are ever
going to be conclusively answerable, however.) Back in Don Corathers'
hosting spot we mooted the possibility that every section of the novel which
describes Stencil is actually narrated by Stencil, and that he is perhaps
sorting things out in his own mind (or trying to): his quest is as much a
quest for the rationalisation of V. as it is a quest for any embodiment of
V. (which is much the same task that the reader is set.)

> The more I read Stencil's impersonations and dreams the more I respect him.
> He has fantastic depth.  Might this not be a very prominent self-portrait of
> Pynchon himself?

I think it is more a portrait of a reader, or the reading process. The types
of visualisations which Stencil is engaging in are more in the line of what
the receiver of messages does in the process of interpreting data (i.e. the
journals), rather than what a composer does in the act of creating same. Of
course, one of the points being made is that everything is interpretation,
every composer is also a responder, and so that supposed line between
creator and created, "fact" and fiction(alisation) is a non-existent one.
Even so, I don't think we can really posit a one-to-one correlation between
Stencil and Pynchon, or go searching for actual Pynchonian journals, as
"jill" suggests.

snip
> Stencil's stories have such depth because the are such an amalgam of dream
> and impersonation.  They may contain truth.

Indeed. They might even contain "truth" or truths that Stencil himself isn't
cognisant of, but which become apparent to the reader: truths about Stencil
himself which he refuses to admit, for example, or ontological truths about
"truth" and "reality" which are at variance with the epistemological
foundation of Stencil's quest.

________

One other thing about this section. A majority of the narrators in the
chapter whom Stencil impersonates are European immigrants or refugees,
rather than indigenous: P. Aeuil, Max, Waldetar, Hanne etc. But I don't
think that this means that they are simply "colonialists" in the same way
that the spies and tourists they (ob)serve are. There is a bit of
cross-cultural empathy going on (a multicultural rather than assimilationist
paradigm I think), and which Pynchon is playing around with. A good example
of this is when Portuguese-born Waldetar recalls joking around with his
young wife, Nita, in respect of Muslim (or Hebrew, is it?) versus Christian
customs and mores, espousing the potential benefit (wisdom?) of the
Solomonic tradition of "One man, several wives." (79.23) Nita's laughing
rebuke actually sounds stereotypically Jewish to my ear: "Great king ...
who? One peasant girl you can't even support."

The other general comment I'd make is that there doesn't seem to me to be
any evidence in the novel that Pynchon has delved into Gnosticism to any
significant degree at this stage of his career. Again, I think it is one of
the things which marks his development as an author: a fascination with
Gnosticism and the occult is something which seems to have occured between
the writing of _Lot49_ and _GR_ (i.e. during the mid- to late '60s, which,
in terms of the general Zeitgeist of that era, sounds pretty right to me.)

best