vv2

[cj hurtt]

hey folks, my name is cj hurtt and this is my stab at vv 2. i’ve never hosted before and am relativly new to pynchon, so i may tread familiar ground and/or miss something so feel free to jump in.

p. 30. as this section opens we find benny at the new years eve party aboard the susanna squaducci. Just a few lines in, dewey gland climbs the cross trees and sings. When benny scoffs at what he takes for anti war lyrics "What was the airborne boy’s problem...Who hasn’t seen that. It happens for other reasons besides war. I was born in a Hooverville before the war." paola says that’s just it. being born. it is right after that we read that dewey’s voice sounds inanimate. so once again benny is at odds with the inanimate and we have another juxtaposition. but why would benny perceive dewey as sounding inanimate?

later, at one minute into 1956 dewey and benny switch places. i’m unsure of the sigifigance of this. father time reference? symbolic of a possible cycle societies could move through? hunter gatherer to technocracy and back? last one there is probably a stretch. it may just be a reprive for profane. a few moments to be god on top of a spar. pynchon does appear to be sympathetic to those who enjoy a good night of drinking and/or fucking now and again. or maybe it means nothing.

p 31 while pretending to be god, profane zaps people with his finger then decides the better of it. benny doesn’t seem the type to get all new testament on someone’s ass.

this passivity seems to me at least, connected his yo yoing. can’t imagine a pro active schlemiel.



p32 the mouse trap caper. here profane gets to utilize the inanimate to fool the watchman...if only for a short while before a mouse trap snaps on his hand. he also gets beaned by an unidentified snow ball thrower.

p34 "And a dozen homeless, slouched on the wooden bench, trying to sleep. Waiting for a long haul bus run neither by Greyhound nor Trialways." not sure of this sentence. sounds kinda sinister. are they waiting for salvation? death? or just a bus? 

p36 benny is described as being soft and fat, with eyea small and like a pigs. a proto-slothrop?

p37 "He walked; walked, he thought sometimes, the aisles of a bright, gigantic supermarket, his only function to want." perhaps reading too much into it, but, this sentence makes benny sound a little inanimate himself.

p39 the screw for a navel dream. i interpret it and the sentence that follows it, "To Profane, alone in the street, it would always seem maybe he was looking for something too to make the fact of his own disassembly plausible as that of any machine." to mean that maybe deep down we all just want to be thingimified. but, then again i could be off.

that’s all for now. there will be more later as i try to go a little more in depth. feel free to agree disagree rip it apart or just ignore it.

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