VV(6) - Chapter Four

[Terrance]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> I:  Schoenmaker goes to The War.  He becomes a mechanic.  He fixes things.
> He loves Godolphin, and then hates Halidom.  His love for the damaged
> Godolphin and his hate for the butchery of Halidom move him to become a
> mechanic of the human face (this includes other parts, but only
> cosmetically).

Love and Hate, flip and flop, retreat "to a diametric
opposite rather than any reasonable search for a golden
mean." Yes, this man will destroy the human race. 



> 
> But Schoenmaker experiences a "decay of purpose."  His initial love and hate
> must fade.  They (love & hate) must of necessity be augmented in the cause
> of "purpose" by another means:  the "idea" of purpose.

Hmmmmm, yeah, thanks. 


> 
> II:  Here is the Nose Job.  This is where the fruit of Schoenmaker's "decay
> of purpose" is manifest.  He is of Pynchon's mad-scientists, complete with
> his cynical and salacious assistant Trench.  The ensuing threesome is
> chilling and fascinating.
> 
> III:  Here we have the product of the mad-scientist:  Esther after the Nose
> Job.  She has become Schoenmaker's slave.  She loves her new-found extreme
> passivity.  She is relieved and enthralled to be so fully controlled.


Koool, funny stuff, right. 

He will make her a duplicate, a copy of her "handmaiden"
(again those biblical and Catholic references, Augustine's
reply to Faustus BK XII on Rachel or the Incest of the Jews,
Genesis, Esther) Irving. Remember when Rachel goes to pay
the good doctor, who comes high, on the fringes of German
town, where Brauhaus plays continuously, she meets one of
his assistants, a secretary/receptionist/nurse/mistress with
an impossibly coy retrousse nose and thousands of freckles,
all of which is the good doctor's work. 

He is indeed another of P's mad-scientists, complete, as you
say so wonderfully, with his cynical and salacious assistant
Trench. Trench, what a great name, Trench, another JD, we
are sick is what the boys say in West Side Story and it's
what the crew will say too, we are sick, wonder if the good
doctor gave him that name?, Trench,  who, when not assisting
or playing the voyeur (boy P is fun when you can accept what
he's up to, his use of sexual perversity and the like and
not try to deconstruct it with relativistic unmoralities)
throws scalpels at a plaque given to the good doctor by the
United Jewish Appeal. Now I know that the term "black humor"
is no longer in use, but this is funny stuff and black too,
kinda like naming Rachel Owl-galss's  father Stuyvesant, but
I'll explain this anti-Semitic connection later, here, in
the fashionable maze of German town, far from the fields of
Poppies and the supplies and demands of war, the good
doctor, who worked so hard, eventually managing to finish
Med. school by working as a mechanic and for a bootlegger in
Decatur (I bet our new Secretary of State knows who Decatur
was), has gone over to the bad side, it was so subtle even
Profane, usually sensitive that way, probably wouldn't have
noticed, but for us, it's clear, it began as you say, David,
with Love, but the boy, who had joined the war so young,
lied about his age, changed his own name, was affected so by
the loss of the men he adored, he emulated, idolized,
internalized narcissistically. The face. He developed a
fixation or a strong attachment to their brave flights into
the clouds, their noble flights like Icarus, and loss,
death, so noble still, in the air not in the Trench,
manifested a state of Limbo (oh that Limbo state again) when
the man he Loved, Godolphin crashed to the ground, his face
cracked. The good doctor's obsession with the physiognomy of
flying men crashed to the ground, he assumed a state of
Limbo and swung over to the opposite side, Hate, hate  for
the Holy and unnatural Halidoms of his own calling. He would
find no reasonable middle ground, no golden mean only a
cultural harmony rationalized, an ideal established by
movies, advertisements, magazine illustrations. Remember
that when Rachel goes to pay the good doctor she blows a
halo of smoke, she is a good angel, but here the good doctor
is surrounded by the halo cast by his equipment. She argues
with him about the soul. The inside & outside. Later, he
will reveal his Platonism when Esther refuses to be a
duplicate of his assistant Irving. And will the good doctor
pay for Esther's delinquency? No, and Rachel won't either,
maybe that's why she pays for Esther's 
nose job. 

BTW, I don't think the doctor is doing pro bono work on that
rouge gallery, nope, they are only a collection. A sexual
turn on. Stencil passed her on to the good doctor, the ugly
ones, when they feel ugly, fuck. This collection is directly
contrasted with what Rachel, who, as we remember, provides
us with the view of mirror time and commentary in the
office, sees, boy with weak chin, girl with gauze beak,
parents whispering finances.