GRGR(17) The Hauptstufe myth

[Seb Thirlway]

-----Original Message-----
From: Terrance F. Flaherty <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>

[snip]
>Take for example the Zone-Herero. Remember, the Zone-Herero
>are mystically orientated. the chapters currently under
>discussion are also mystically orientated and remember that
>the Zone-Herero's believe that

>"There may be no gods, but there is a Pattern: names by
>themselves may have no magic, but the Act of naming, the
>physical utterance, obeys the Pattern. Nordhausen means
>dwelling in the north."
[snip]

>Myth in GR and relation of myth to deity in GR function in
>many ways, but one important way in which it functions is
>the concurrent use of the denial of the viability of myth
>which leads to the inanimate or pornographic conspiracy
>against the cycle of life and death, return and so on. And
>the  denial of death, the denial of life and the denial of
>love, lead to violence. Note that soon Saure will make a
>statement on LOVE. Also, myth is only denied, but the sense
>of deity in GR is more "ABSENTEE" than denied, more absentee
>(Pynchon's ironic epithet for the War) say, then the War.
>Patterns are how a sense of order in a godless grand scheme
>of things is expressed. The denial of myth is the
>concomitant of the stress placed on abstraction (say, the
>Yaw formula--see 236-234 ref., not mine) and on mechanical
>explanations for human existence, thoughts, actions and
>passions
[snip]

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 - 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...
The only critical look we get at this assumption is in Slothrop's
fantasy at the Casino: fantasy of finding the Holy Centre with
Waxwing, blazing in there with tommy-guns blazing to avenge
Tantivy.  Which is cruelly let down.  That was pages ago, and
Slothrop turned away from the fantasy to what he's just been
doing: find out all he can.

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!  And for this purpose: to retrieve some
hash of mythically good quality, in circumstances which will
later become a legend in the Zone.  What a great escapade, what a
great story, but it doesn't advance Slothrop or us towards the
S-Gerat one little bit.
And at this point, with his myth made so mercilessly clear to
him, I think Slothrop stops believing in it.  Brennschluss.
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: General Electric, with Marvy as their agent,
Them in Moscow, with Tchitcherine as their pawn, the British with
their Operation Backfire, they're all closing in on the Rocket,
as part of the cut-and-dried, unmysterious parcelling up of the
spoils that Slothrop (very neat Mr Pynchon!) is soon to intrude
upon.  Dressed as he is, he simply DOES NOT EXIST in the context
of the Potsdam summit.  No more Superheroes.

Slothrop is not cut out to go any further into the mystery of the
Rocket, because larger, and more efficient forces are already
claiming it as a subject of their cut-and-dried, unimaginative,
utterly unmythical world.  The S-Gerat already has a price on it,
the Rocket is already becoming just an assemblage of lumps of
metal (last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark: the Rocket is now
just an object, not even an "artifact", just something of a
certain size, size being the abstracted quality because the
purpose is FILING: the Rocket is soon to be fileable, meaning
forgettable).  Enzian doesn't catch on to this, because his
mystical sense is stronger perhaps, or because he has the
advantage, being a Herero, of being utterly alien to GE, Moscow,
the British, and rejecting them instinctively as alien?
Terrance's other post makes it clear that Slothrop doesn't have
this advantage - he's still tied to his native U.S.

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.  Not really
Rocket material, you see, because Rocket material is soon to be
grey little men in endless grey little rooms - a buzzer sounds at
5pm, they lock away their work in grey filing cabinets, file down
the grey stairs to their grey little cars and their grey little
homes - perhaps to "try very hard for a baby", joylessly, as a
duty, like Beaver and Jessica  And the Rocket promised so much...

Myth is for dopers and dreamers: the Rocket belongs to Them now




seb