GRGR(19): Notes, pp. 397-409

[Jeremy Osner]

p 397 "thinking... only about getting home, fucking somebody, fucking
her
into some submission": 'scuse me if this is getting too personal; but I
have
trouble identifying with Franz right here. I wonder if anyone else can
speak to this; to me the times that I have had sex with someone while
someone else (or someone else's *image*) in my thoughts, have been
notable only because they were unpleasant, not fulfilling, etc. But it
seems
like this night is being portrayed as the erotic acme of Franz's life.
Is this
just meant as an illustration of how sexually frustrated he is?

p. 398 "A film. How else? Isn't that what they made of my child, a
film?"
(and, in the next paragraph, he calls Ilse a "movie-child"): I think
this
means, "instead of a real person, 'Ilse' is an entertainment for Franz
[created by Weissman]". It's interesting that she is a "movie-child",
when
on the previous page he referred to those who share her date of
conception
as "shadow-children".

p. 398 "Zwölfkinder": is this a real place?

p. 398 "Storks are asleep among two- and three-legged horses, rusted
gearworks and splintered roof of the carousel, their heads jittering
with
air-currents and yellow Africa, dainty black snakes a hundred feet below

meandering in the sunlight across the rocks and dry pans." A few things
about this sentence: I liked reading from the real storks to the fake
horses,
that made a nice transition in my thoughts; does anyone know what
symbolism storks would hold here? (Kai?); what the hell is going on
after
the word "air-currents"? This is where the sentence stops making sense
for
me.

p. 398 "The plaster witch, wire mesh visible at her breasts and
haunches,
leans near the oven, her poke at corroded Hansel in perpetual arrest.":
Pökler is playing a role in the Hansel-and-Gretel drama going on in GR;
but I don't think it corresponds to any character in Grimm. He is the
nameless engineer who designed the witch's oven.

p. 398 "Gretel's eyes lock wide open, never a blink, crystal-heavy
lashes
batting...": Doesn't quite make sense that her eyelashes are batting
when
her eyes are locked wide open... Is this saying that Pökler (or the
narrator)
is imagining the batting?

p. 398 "languets and flues": Ok, my dictionary defines a flue as an
organ
pipe; but the only definition for "languet" (a definition to conjure
with) is,
"something resembling the tongue in shape or use". What is tonguelike on

an organ?

p. 398 "Did you ever go on holiday to Zwölfkinder?": In the coming
paragraphs Franz will be talking about Leni; I couldn't figure out for a

while who was being addressed here but now I'm fairly sure it's Leni.

p. 398 "She must have always been a child on somebody's list": "she" is
Leni; what does this sentence mean?

p. 399 "arguing with his own ghost from ten years ago": Franz considers
himself to have outgrown left politics -- do we ever see him in his
leftist
phase? I hadn't thought of him that way before.

p. 400 "a street... that had something he thought he needed": What is
there
that he needs? The sentence "Over the years... the coordinates switched
from Cartesian x and y... to polar azimuth and range of the weapon as
deployed", makes it sound to me almost as if he were visualizing a
target
for the rocket, aiming it in his dreams *inward*, into Berlin or into
his
own head. Or he is visualizing his enemies in power, aiming the rocket
at
him? Because get this: "if he faced exactly along a certain
compass-bearing [i.e. polar azimuth] his prayer would be heard: he'd be
safe." This reading I am suggesting seems like a stretch but it's the
only
way I can get all this to make sense. Any other suggestions? This is one
of
those really confusing paragraphs that come along now and then.

p. 401 "Major Weissman was one of several gray eminences...": though
we have, obviously, already encountered Weissman, I think this is
chronologically speaking, the earliest we have seen him in Germany. I
like
the comparison of Weissman's attitude toward Pökler, to Pökler's
attitude
toward his wife. And you get the sense that Pökler understands what is
going on without being fully aware of it. The tense of the last
paragraph is
a bit funny; "Pökler might not have had the will" -- it seems to me like
this
"might" doesn't make sense at the moment we are hearing Franz thinking.

p. 401 "to leap like a chess knight...": a reference to Der Springer?

p. 401 "technologique": why French?

p. 402 "But Leni was wrong": picking up from the middle of p. 400, where

the digression started, "But really he did *not* obey like a corpse." I
read
the statement that "Pökler was an extension of the Rocket", as saying he
is
in this wholeheartedly, not simply as a result of Weissman's
manipulation...

p. 403 "ready to accept Hitler on the basis of Demian-metaphysics": my
memory of Demian is a bit hazy -- anyone care to expand on it?

p. 405 "What disaster had he dared to look back on?": I think it is Nazi

Germany. -- Though "look back on" is not an exact fit.

p. 405 "He reverted that season to childhood...": Nice portrait of a
frustrated-little-kid fantasy -- I especially like the picture of him
sitting on
the pot, feeling "that pleasant anticipation..." and thinking of how
Leni
would be humiliated before his greatness.

p. 405 "nightmares he had to find his own way up out of... draw back
into
the redoubt of waking Pökler": "his own way", because Leni is no longer
by his side to care for him. A "redoubt" is a fortress, and I like that
image.
Anyone care to tell me what ephedrine is/ why it's used here?

p. 406 "something here, among the paper": i.e. the plans for the A-4.
The
Rocket is death, is Blicker. Extinction is seductive because it offers
hope
of salvation from loneliness and failure; Pökler's status as a living
human
is bound up in being more afraid of dying than attracted to the promise
of
nullity.

p. 406 "a dependable working motor, one the military could use in the
field to kill people": Franz has lost a bit of his delusional armor
here;
notice that he does not say "one that we could use to go to Venus".

p. 407 "There has been this strange connection between the German mind
and the rapid flashing of successive stills to counterfeit movement, for
at
least two centuries": I don't quite get the syntax here -- when I read
it I
keep expecting it to say, "There has been this strange connection in the

German mind between the rapid flashing of successive stills to
counterfeit
movement and...", and then I realize I'm not reading the book.

p. 407 "He entered his own cubicle and saw her...": how many years has
it
been since he saw her last?

p. 409 "rapprochement": It seems to me like Pynchon uses this word
really
frequently -- does it have a special historical significance in the
context of
WWII or is it just a word he's fond of?

--
Mortals are immortals, and
immortals are mortals, the one
living the other's death and
dying the other's life.

Heraclitus, quoted by Bertrand Russell
http://www.readin.com/books/westernphilosophy/