GRGR(17) The Hauptstufe myth

[rj]

st
> IMO this is central to what happens to Slothrop at this point.
> Before Rocketman, S. has been living his own myth and carrying us
> along with him.  The myth Slothrop is living out is the myth of
> the mystery/thriller story, and TRP deliberately (I think)
> doesn't comment upon it previously

Not sure I can see how this is working.

> it's there all along,
> however, as something the reader will contribute: there it is, at
> the back of your mind, the idea that Slothrop is the protagonist,
> the one who will unravel the mystery.  How else is the reader to
> make sense of Slothrop's wanderings?  There's always that goal...

Yes, there is an expectation that Slothrop's quest will provide some
resolution. But I think the same can be said for Tchitchy and Enzian
also, and Pointy, and Blicero maybe. It's a bit like *It's a Mad, Mad,
Mad, Mad World*, everyone after the elusive Grail -- you keep expecting
Phil Silvers to pop up at any moment, only to float off downstream in
his convertible Veedub. Who's going to get the (Schwarz)gold? In *GR*
the reader is conditioned to expect some resolution -- an ending --
because that's what happens in novels with narratives. Of course, it
isn't what happens in life, and I think this might be part of Mr P's
point. 

> And at this point, with his myth made so mercilessly clear to
> him, I think Slothrop stops believing in it.  Brennschluss.

Well, in this context, perhaps Brenschluss for Slothrop as Text and
Trajectory *was* that night spent at Jamf's crypt, or pre-Brenschluss at
least, with true Brenschluss coming later on in the train to the
Raketen-Stadt, as he is reading Jamf's notebooks and dreams that JAMF =
I. Here he stops believing in the Rocket as something to chase after,
some externality, and starts realising it as something which is
inextricably a part of his own being. What else can he do from then on?
He has to go with the flow, enjoy the ride. He is the rocket, man. His
Hauptstufe! on the autobahn later is a peak (he actively parodies the
parody he has been turned into, joyfully so, mock-triumphantly),
acceptance, and submission to the inevitable all rolled into one.
Apogee.

All the stuff in London checking out the bomb sites, his paranoid
premonitions about the bombs which he barely even admits to himself; his
exhaustive research at the Casino; his chasing after the S-Gerat
paperwork after; this was what was fuelling him. But on Jamf's grave the
fuel is finally running out and he is beginning to accept his rocketude
for what it is. He has "passed a test, not somebody else's test, but one
of his own for a change."(269.1) And he looks down at the city below
which is a "necropolis", or, at least, a necropolis in wait. There are
still heights above as well, though, as he "hunkers down in the cold
curve of a mountain trail".

> Slothrop's myth and the Rocket's are interdependent: as long as
> the Rocket is a mythical object, lying out there in the unknown,
> spawning fertile names (or Acts of Naming), then Slothrop can act
> out the Protagonist myth - as long as he doesn't know too much,
> the S-Gerat will still have mystery and lead him on (das
> ewig-Geratliche zieht uns hinan - sorry that's a terrible
> joke...).  But we've already had some dark hints of what the
> Rocket is becoming:

Enzian has already exploded whatever mystique the rocket might have had
(for Slothrop and for the reader I think): "what was alive is only an
Aggregat again, an Aggregat of pieces of dead matter, no longer anything
that can move, or has a Destiny of any shape-- "(362.21) It's the same
sort of stark and empty realisation of human mortality and the lifeless
inanimate that Tyrone was confronted with abed Jamf's tomb.
 
> Now Slothrop suddenly turns into a parody of what we've at least
> been hoping he was all along - yep, Rocketman, his head bursting
> with every part number and specification (remember those sessions
> at the Casion), the one who understands the Rocket and will
> unravel its mystery.  But he doesn't understand the Rocket - he's
> just dressed like one!  
[snip]
> Dressed as he is, he simply DOES NOT EXIST in the context
> of the Potsdam summit.  No more Superheroes.

I think maybe you are selling Tyrone a little short here. I don't think
he ever aspired to any sort of hero-protagonist role. He might have
fantasised -- back in London he was fantasising about his prolific
sexual reconnoitres, and what a smooth and suave romantic lead he was,
and other of his American fantasies recur all through the text. But in
the Zone the disguises are constantly thrust upon him, and he takes
whatever he's given. He has allowed himself to be dressed up by Saure
and the girls, and it turns out to be a pretty nifty disguise after all.
In Potsdam he gets the goods. Mission achieved, until ... the twist.
What more could you ask from a Hollywood superhero?

> In this world that's claiming the Rocket, Slothrop is, well, a
> bit useless really, too easily distracted: you should be after
> the S-Gerat Tyrone, not giving us readers a lot of fun by chasing
> after a beautiful smoke dressed in a rocket suit.

Everyone is chasing Slothrop as much as they are chasing the Rocket, if
not more so: Pointy's crew, Major Marvy's Mothers, Tchitchy, the
Argentinians, he keeps bumping into Enzian, and then the Counterforce,
and his "chroniclers" too. He remains central to the concerns of the
novel throughout, I think.

best