GRGR(18): Finding Lisaura

[Seb Thirlway]

From: Jeremy Osner <jeremy at xyris.com>


>>  He's been  set up (?) to meet Greta
>
>Let's try and figure out who would have an interest in Slothrop
and Greta
>getting together... I can't see how Tchitcherine could possibly
care about
>that; plus if he had done it, I would think he and his sidekick
would have
>made some kinda reference to it in the previous episode. Which
leaves Them,
>the Ones who track Tchitcherine's and Enzian's movements, and
try to keep
>tabs on Slothrop as well. I don't know what their interest in
Greta is;
>I've forgotten what role she plays in the rest of the book. (To
tell the
>truth, we're getting close to the end of what I've understood in
GR in the
>past -- maybe 50 pages more or so.)

thank you... nice to know I'm not the only one who loses the plot
slightly at this point..

That's a good question: who would have an interest in Slothrop
and Greta getting together?
It's a very natural question to ask, since I agree that whoever
first pointed out that their meeting could be construed as being
slightly fishy has a good point - and we've been sensitised to
this kind of digging under the surface of events by the whole of
the book so far.
But I read your answer as being "no-one", or at least that
there's no-one you can think of who could have set this meeting
up, because as you point out, who would stand to gain?  And I
agree.  To me, Greta and Slothrop's meeting is something entirely
new in the book - something that just happens, which has no
connection with the great Structure of
Rocket-Enzian-Tchitcherine-Marvy-Pointsman.  No connection is
offered by TRP, as well as I can remember, though if anyone knows
some text to the contrary I stand corrected (I know Greta _does_
have a connection to Weissmann, but I don't think this counts).

Compare Greta to Geli.  I don't think Slothrop's meeting with her
was set up either.  But it does have significance for Slothrop in
the context of the Structure, because she's Tchitcherine's girl.
It's a chance meeting that connects in to the Structure, first of
all because Geli also acts as an observer for Tchitchy, and so
the meeting has a knock-on effect in terms of the whole
Rocket-spiel: it results in Tchitchy becoming aware of Slothrop,
and in Slothrop coming to know that the S-Gerat is for sale.
Geli is connected to the Rocket through Tchitcherine, but I think
even before we next see her (anticipating here) she is already
painted as definitely not part of this Rocket Structure in the
way that Marvy, or Enzian, or Tchitchy are.  She's light (gaily
tripping) not sunk into the Rocket-obsession up to her neck.  I
don't see Geli as someone who has secrets - as someone pointed
out, she's one of the most healthy characters in the book.  Her
involvement with Tchitcherine is an "arrangement", that's all: if
there is more to it, it's very simply that she loves him and
would like more than an "arrangement" - the depth to Geli is a
very simple, explicable depth, not a depth of plots,
counterplots, obsessions going back for years.  No way is Geli an
agent of anyone or anything, except as far as (and only as far
as) is suits her at the time.  She manipulates Slothrop, but only
for the sake of a good orgasm.
So this is what Geli _is_, as far as I can see.  In spite of
this, Slothrop still gets a moment of paranoia while he's with
her.  That moment of paranoia is the only instance I can think of
in the book where paranoia is resolved in a satisfying way, where
the torrent of thoughts piling up _does_ for once just die down
into a mood of "well, it doesn't matter really, back to the
matter in hand" - Slothrop curls up with her in the bed and falls
asleep.
In contrast, once Slothrop is with Greta, we're not given any of
this Rocket-paranoia.  If Slothrop is our best guide to what's
going on, isn't this significant?  I don't think there's any
other source of information that would allow speculation on
whether S and Greta were "set up"; again, I could be corrected on
this, but no other character in the book even hints that they
were set up.  So we're thrown back on Slothrop's own disturbed
mind: what does _he_ think?  And he doesn't seem to think of
Greta in terms of this Rocket-structure: yes, she does have
something to tell him, later: but this is something Slothrop sits
and listens to, as it is told - he doesn't project her connection
to Weissmann and the 00000 backwards to their meeting and
speculate that the meeting might not have been accidental, so,
IMO, neither should we.
There is a nervousness, or silence, in all the characters who
mention Greta (anticipating again): von Goll, Morituri, all the
Anubis crowd.  I don't think anyone could have deliberately
thrown Slothrop and Greta together for a purpose, because no-one
knows her well enough to predict what the result might be.
Morituri knows quite a bit, but even he's mystified as to exactly
what is going on in her head.
Greta's a loose cannon, she's gone off the rails, she's a bit of
debris left over from another age: hence the nervousness towards
her - the Anubis crowd are completely unable to deal with the
entirety of her, once she strays outside the accepted rules of
Having a Good Time, but they can't really put her over the side
because they are guilty of making her what she is, and know it in
some way...she's isolated, and has developed a set of obsessions
of her own (Bianca esp.) that are as strong as Slothrop's were:
stronger, now that Slothrop's obsession is on the wane.
S and G.'s meeting is significant, but IMO to look for
significance of the sort we've been used to (connection to the
Rocket-Structure, reality and significance being a function of
how connected in you are, how much your actions are judged
significant and worthy of manipulation by a hidden Power in the
shadows) is a mistake.  Greta has her own very strong reality,
which seems to take Slothrop by surprise: why else is Slothrop so
passive towards her?
Slothrop's fake identity as Max Schlepzig is an outrageous
co-incidence, but that's all it is.  We hear Slothrop being the
"sensible" one in the exchange about Max: no, no connection at
all, it's just a co-incidence.  From the Slothrop we know this is
strange talk indeed.

So going back to

>(To tell the
>truth, we're getting close to the end of what I've understood in
GR in the
>past -- maybe 50 pages more or so.)

me too... because this is the start of the Anti-Paranoia part of
GR.  Which I find very difficult to put together into something I
understand.  Greta and her state of mind is something that just
happened: sure all those good-time folk on the Anubis didn't mean
to send someone over the edge back then, but somehow it just
happened, here's Greta now and she's a mess; which nobody can
deny, but nobody really wants to get too far into what is going
on in that head.  Too frightening, the way things can just happen
like that...
Her meeting with Slothrop just happens, as well.  And it's quite
a shock for Slothrop.  What happened to the grinning,
Hawaiian-shirted swordsman we know and love?  Here he settles
down into something like domesticity.  This just happens to him
as well.  I can't remember where the riff on Anti-Paranoia is,
but the meeting with Greta is IMO where it begins to take hold -
there's a kind of safety in paranoia, because it posits all the
answers lying somewhere, even if they're beyond your reach, right
now, or even if they'll always be beyond your reach.  Greta is
never fully explained, and Slothrop never really gets to the
bottom of his Greta/Bianca thoughts (anticipating again) - but
crucially, he doesn't try to get to the bottom of them, either:
they're just something he's upset about, something he has to live
with.  I think that looking for a "set-up" in S and G's meeting
is a paranoid approach to it, which misses the point that
paranoia doesn't work anymore from this point onwards in GR.



seb