VV (1): Commentary II- the Inanimate

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Inanimateness is a major, perhaps the central theme of the novel - as I have
said before and am sure most of you have been aware of for a long time. The
theme is introduced on p. 20-21. After he decided to leave Teflon's place -
"'Out in the snow,' Profane said, 'is where that camera, Teflon, is sending
us.'" (20) - Profane is alone on deck of the ferry he and Paola are
travelling to Norfolk with:

"Snow falling lazy on the water made 11 P.M. look like twilight or an
eclipse. Overhead every few seconds a horn sounded off to warn away anything
on collision course. But yet as if there were nothing in this roads (sic!)
after all but ships, untenanted, inanimate, making noises at each other
which meant nothing more than the turbulence of the screws or the snow-hiss
on the water. And Profane all alone in it." (20)

Let us note here that the world of the inanimate, though primarily
identified with machines and engines in the first chapter, is associated
with a phenomenon of the natural world here, snow, and without meaning.
Fausto Majistral will have to say a few rather profound things about this
topic much later. At first the fear of the inanimate is described as a
psychological phenomenon:

"Some of us are afraid of dying; others of human loneliness. Profane was
afraid of land or seascapes like this, where nothing else lived but himself.
It seemed he was always walking into one: turn a corner in the street, open
a door to a weather deck and there he'd be, in alien country." (21)

Then we start encountering people who entertain a kind of sexual
relationship with the inanimate: Pig and his Harley, Da Conho and his
machine gun, and most importantly Rachel and her MG. Yes, even Pig Bodine,
the madman, badass, fool and clown (21), whose name and nickname point to
his function as an emblematic figure of crude sensual desire and vulgarity -
more generally: the realm of the bodily (which is also the realm of farce,
carnival etc.) - feels attracted by his Harley Davidson and while giving in
to his desire and racing the engine turns into an "enigma or sinister
vision". Note also that Pig - just like Rachel - enacts his secret wishes by
night, "under the rose". Watching the scene Profane feels reminded of
Rachel, which is another hint at the sexual desire at the heart of Pigs
motorcycle fetishism.

During the flashback to 1954 we first meet Da Conho: 

"Benny had wondered then what it was with Da Conho and his machine gun. Love
for an object, this was new to him. When he found out not long after this
that the same thing was with Rachel and her MG, he had his first
intelligence that something had been going on under the rose, maybe for
longer and with more people than he would care to think about." (23) 

This now exceeds the notion of fear of the inanimate as a psychological,
perhaps neurotical trait. The passage points to a rather sinister change in
the behaviour of humans everywhere. In other words, Da Conho and Rachel are
not isolated freaks, but embodiments of a tendency towards the inanimate
discernible in the whole of society. Also, the desire for the inanimate
seems connected to the tendency of regarding humans themselves as inanimate
- the psychic process of "thingification" of human beings, as Aimee Cesaire
put it with reference to slavery and Colonialism. The sexual desire or love
for the machine seems to correspond with the utter absence of emotions as
far as ones fellow human beings are concerned. The most explicit expression
of this process of reification of human beings we will find in the dialogue
between SHROUD and Benny in chapter 10, right after Mondaugen's story has
been related in chapter nine. The passage also refers to the prime example
of treating humans as if they were things in history:

"While at Anthrosearch Proafane listened with half an ear to the coffee
percolating; and carried on another imaginary conversation with SHROUD. By
now that had become tradition." 

(Note that this is almost, but not quite fantastic - it is an "imaginary
conversation", which is also indicated through the missing inverted commas
when SHROUD speaks. Profane is really talking to himself.) 

"Remember, Profane, how it is on Route 14, south, outside Elmira, New York?
You walk on an overpass and look west and see the sun setting on a junkpile.
Acres of old cars, piled up ten high in rusting tiers- A graveyard for cars.
If I could die, that's what my graveyard would look like.
'I wish you would. Look at you, masquerading like a human being. You ought
to be junked, not burned or cremated.'"
Of course,. Like a human being. Now remember, right after the Nuremberg war
trials? Remember the photographs of Auschwitz? Thousands of Jewish corpses,
stacked up like those poor car-bodies. Schlemihl: It's already started.

(Note that SHROUD reminds Benny of his Jewishness.)

'Hitler did that. He was crazy.'
Hitler, Eichmann, Mengele. Fifteen years ago. Has it occurred to you that
there might be no more standards for crazy or sane, now that it's started?
'What, for Christ's sake?'"

Whatever the Holocaust may have been as a historical event or is in
dictionaries, in V. its most important aspect seems to be the indeed
unbearable notion that the Germans working in the extermination camps
thought of their victims only as objects that had to be put to death (yes, I
am aware of the contradiction between "objects" and "put to death" - this is
the ethical problem we are dealing with here) and then disposed of in the
most efficient way - the notion of industrialized mass murder.

The answer to Benny's question probably is: What has started is a movement
of the individual and collective psyche towards regarding objects as beings
to be loved and desired like humans and vice versa towards regarding humans
as objects to be junked like cars. In other words, a large portion of
humankind is tending towards the inanimate. 

The most important example for this fundamental change in human behaviour is
Rachel Owlglass, the girl that holds the yo-yo string. Interestingly
Profane, who is afraid of inanimate objects because they seem to be
constantly threatening his life (24), wonders whether he doesn't "put
himself deliberately in the way of hostile objects, as if he were looking to
get schlimazzeled out of existence." (24) There seems to be a death wish
related to Profane's fear of the inanimate which also finds expression in
his obsession for Rachel. In any case, on p.26 Rachel waxes philosophical on
the topic of inanimateness. Essentially she asks Benny to be her friend in a
world that - let's make believe, she says - is void of all other human
beings, just filled with dead rocks and meaninglessness. This should perhaps
appeal to Benny, but we remember that not even Paola's presence did help
make his death-in-life sensation on board of the ferry to Norfolk go away.
In fact, Benny does not know how to respond to her "MG-words,
inanimate-words" (27) at all. Rachel's world for him consists of "objects
coveted or valued, an atmosphere he couldn't breathe." (27) Yet, inevitably,
he falls in love. Benny is afraid of the inanimate but also feels helplessly
drawn to it, still so in 1955, when Rachel's hand still holds him on a
string. And, on the level of imagery, it is no accident that she keeps
visiting him "at night, like a succubus, coming in with the snow. There was
no way to keep either out." (30) The snow - as in Melville, as Malta and the
other dead rocks in V. - is a symbol of an inanimate, meaningless natural world.


In an attempt to indicate how the two strands of chapter one I have examined
more closely might correspond with each other: Laughter, farce, carnival,
low comedy, vulgarity can all be seen as weapons directed against the threat
of a life being usurpated by the forces of death. The mechanization of
thoughts and emotions, the inanimate which seems to control some people's
behaviour, for good reason is the main subject of comedy (and I cannot help
but think of some of the more obvious instances of mechanical thought on
this generally very likeable discussion list). Perhaps one might say that in
Pynchon's fiction the narrative mode - in chapter one of V. the farcical,
more generally: all forms of popular entertainment of the age the action of
the respective novel is set in - is in a way set against the often deadly
serious content. In much better words: "All History must converge to Opera
in the Italian Style." (M&D, 706). And this might be the only way History
can be made bearable, and even fun.

Thomas