V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness

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Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
> 
> Not only in this novel but also in Moby Dick, which we agree is an important source for the imagery of V. - along with The Education of Henry Adams probably the most important. It might be helpful to read the passage in the light of Melville's novel.


Yes, we don't want to get too far out or into the novel,
where Veronica and that ivory comb are, but white Ivory
here, and even the white Rocket in GR, is quite a different
symbol.  

BTW, The whales shows up in Mondaugen's story, HP.V.283-85

"Not even whales...ivory...it easier not to care as you once
had." 


> 
> As far as V. is concerned I beleive it is useful to distinguish between the inanimateness of, for example, the rock and the wind, and the tendency towards inanimateness in human beings. The latter is related to the inanimateness of the machine. The rock and the wind are inscrutable, just like the skeleton in the Arsacides or the sperm whale's head which is questioned by Ahab about the meaning of the universe, but they are not good or evil. They can't be, they just are. The machine on the other hand can only be understood in terms of the technological progress of mankind and the social and psychological changes it brought about. Machines are part of the human world, which the rock or the wind are not, and they form a realm of the human world that is without emotions or ethics. In the course of technological development and the growing dependency of humans on technology they affect the
> human psyche, which is a major theme in Pynchon, of course. In V., if I am not mistaken,  technology makes it possible for humans to enter a state of mind in which they regard other human beings as objects, and at the same time provides the means for killing people in large numbers and stack up their corpses like "car bodies" (295).

Yes, for example, see the whales section referenced above,
the collection, the statistics, the shared property, the
"luxury" (say when a powerful government drops bombs on a
less powerful people) of not caring for each and every
individual life--the corpses stacked in Germany or in Elmira
or in SW Africa. 


> 
> Now, in a perhaps futile attempt to return to McClintic Sphere and his saxophone: The ivory sax and the sounds Sphere creates with it - music of the invisible spheres that, as Ishmael suspects, were perhaps "formed in fright" - corresponds with the inanimateness of the wind and the rock, which is, unlest we forget, also a womb. Sphere's music is an acknowledgment of the endurance of the natural world, inscrutable to the listeners, but letting those who have ears experience for a moment the majesty of an indifferent universe. But Sphere is not merely a spokesman for nature's indifference to all things human, a function for which the ivory sax serves as an emblem. He is not only cool, he also cares. But read on below.

Not sure about this, I think we can say this about music
(Jazz in particular) in GR though. I don't think the Orphic
vibe, even in retrospect, reading back from GR, applies in
V. V., is closer to the Short Stories and so Pynchon has
simply not developed this yet. 



> Compare this to the following: "There was no hair on his head - none to speak of at least - nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull." There are some more passages about Queequeg's head and face in "The Spouter-Inn", which may or may not be relevant here. For the sake of my argument I of course chose the first option: It seems that McClintic Sphere just like Queequeg represents a union or balance of opposites. Queequeg is so immensely important to the symbolic action of Moby Dick and the development of the novel's narrator precisely because he is on good terms with death. He does not perceive death as the annihilation of the soul or as the separation of the soul from the body, or as a transition from this world to the next, but as a natural part of this world, and paradoxically - Queequeg is
> explicitly described as a living paradox more than once in the novel - it is this quality which enables him to repeatedly save other people's lives and in the end bring about Ishmael's rebirth. Likewise, McClintic Sphere is able to care for other people precisely because he is familiar with nature's indifference towards human life and death, an indifference he acknowledges with his beautiful music.
> 
> Thomas, hoping all this makes some sense


A beautiful reading of Queequeg, and I agree with it 1000%,
but I can't see Sphere as  Queequeg. 

Inside  sound, magnetic, even nuclear machinery all day,
mirrors and music, and frustrated that Dr. Slothrop's
suggestion therapy isn't working and Goldolphin, even in a
moment of lucidity has not diagnosed, proscribed a little
diet, so I may avoid the fate of so many attenuated
ghosts.   

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