GRGR(18): Crossing the sea

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 16 Jan 2000, Jeremy Osner wrote:

> There are points in the book where the narration shifts abruptly from
> the third to the second person -- this happens again, poignantly, at the
> bottom of p. 389, where Pynchon, having told of a battle between the
> U-boat (does he ever name it?) and the U.S.S. John E. Badass -- a battle
> narrowly averted by the time-warping intervention of Oneirine -- goes on
> to address the U-boat's Argentine crew directly, and disconcertingly:
> 
>     Now what sea is this you have crossed, exactly, and what sea is
>     it you have plunged more than once to the bottom of, alerted, full
>     of adrenaline, but caught really, buffaloed under the
>     epistemologies of these threats that paranoid you so down and
>     out, caught in this steel pot, softening to devitaminized mush
>     inside the soup-stock of your own words, your waste submarine
>     breath? It took the Dreyfus Affair to get the Zionists out and
>     doing, finally: what will drive you out of your soup-kettle? Has
>     it already happened? Was it tonight's attack and deliverance?
>     Will you go to the Heath, and begin your settlement, and wait
>     there for your Director to come?
> 
> Call me whacky but I get the feeling he's speaking to me here. Like on
> one level, as a reader -- reading GR feels like sailing (or swimming)
> across an ocean. And on another level, perhaps, as a member of the
> Congregation -- P is preaching to me, using the sea as a metaphor for my
> life thus far. I don't want to dissect that metaphor -- started to do
> that mentally just now. But I am quite interested in hearing from you
> all, whether you feel you are being addressed here, and in what
> connection.

Yes, things feel very tense and immediate. Felt that way when Pointsman
was the focus, and again at the end of the church scene with Roger and
Jessica where the Second Person was used with similar "seas to cross"
phraseology.  With regard to the battle avoided by the intervention of
oneirine Weisenburger suppies the information that that Shetzline, author
of the "classic study" of Oneirine (and a novelist in real life), was a
classmate of P and Farina to whom GR is dedicated. Was the averted
encounter of the sub and destroyer some kind of reference to Farina's
motorcycle collision which unfortunately could not be averted?  Also is
the time-modulation property of the drug related to the later dimuntion of
Slopthrop's delta t as mentioned by Seb. All there ideas pop into my
thoughts when I come to this part. 

		P.