GRGR(19): The Victim in a Vakuum

[Jeremy Osner]

OK, let's talk perversion! Herr Pökler doesn't seem to be sure, as of p.
415, whether this is a musical comedy or a hootenanny (and I also get an
image of Peter Pan, leading the clapping to save Tinkerbell); but what
really interests me about his song is the parenthetical paragraph that
begins, "All together, all you masochists out there..."

  Lemme outline a few of the thoughts that run through my head when I
read this. 1. Franz is a masochist, a repressed guy leading all the
repressed audience members (boys only, or boys and girls?) in song. 1.1.
Franz is looking for a Herrin. 1.2. And so is "everyone else," i.e. the
Nazis, or the Audience, or whatever... 2. Hitler is a
Dominatrix-substitute. 2.11. Well, maybe not "Hitler" but, 2.12. the
Rocket is a Dominatrix-substitute. usw... you get the idea. (But do I?)

  So where does that leave us, this diaspora of authority-seekers? A
while back there was a big argument on the list over whether
[paraphrasing here] Pynchon was advocating sexual deviance as an avenue
to personal liberation. I don't particularly want to get *that* one
going again, but... It seems to me like this episode could be used as
ammunition by a bellicose holder of either viewpoint on this issue. Like
you could say, "The impulse toward 'perversion' is a natural human
attribute, when it's repressed you get frustration and the V-2 or
whatever," or also, you could say, "'perversion' is evil the same way
the V-2 [or whatever] is." Please let's not have any expansions on
either of these statements.

  B-but what about p. 426, where the narrator says, "Pökler cannot
reconcile, not really, his dream of the perfectly victimized with the
need bred into him to take care of business -- nor see how these may be
one and the same"? Efficiency = submission? And another thing that
really interests me in this connection is p. 424, where I think a
possible (if tortured) interpretation is, that the story-teller is
comparing him/her/it*self* to a Dominatrix:

      The orders to Blizna were strange enough to be Weissman's
    work: the day Pökler went out to sit in the Polish meadows at
    the exact spot where the rocket was supposed to come down, he
    was certain.

  Here's what I think about this: Pökler knows someone is playing games
with him but he can't be sure who it is. He is in the same position, on
several levels, as the reader of this book -- the story-teller and/or
Weissman is playing cat-and-mouse with him. I think Weissman/Blicero
could be thought of in some respects as being the author of *Gravity's
Rainbow*, but I don't really have the theoretical background to defend
this assertion -- it just strikes me as a groovy lens to look at the
narrative through.

See you in the funhouse,
Jeremy

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