vv2

[jbor]

Thanks for your notes:

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From: "cj hurtt" <cj6 at casco.net>
To: "pynchon list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: vv2
Date: Mon, Oct 16, 2000, 3:06 PM

> 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.

I think it is one of the songs which the paratrooper taught Paola (18-19):
she has taught these songs to Profane, Pig and Dewey. I guess Benny's a
little jealous because the paratrooper was Paola's first lover. I'm
surprised that he understands French. The narrative filters Profane's
translation of and response to the verse (30.20), and this I think
demonstrates just how difficult it is to extract unequivocal *authorial*
statements from Pynchon's text.

> 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.

I thought that the snowball came from the watchman, who has also snavelled
the coffee Profane had brewed. The watchman isn't particularly interested in
accosting Profane; he's actually playing along, I think. Profane's dislike
of the watchman is, like his general negative attitude, indiscriminate. He
is the archetypal angry young man or rebel without a cause, shiftless and
unmotivated (Holden Caulfield with a paunch? Good call that.)

> 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?

Death?

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

There are proto-Bennys in the early stories: "Lardass" Levine in 'The Small
Rain' is one such; and "Meatball" Mulligan and Callisto in 'Entropy' form a
balanced pair in much the same way as Profane and Stencil do.

> p39 the screw for a navel dream.

Reminds me of the fractured and prophetic fable poor mad Pip recalls in
*Moby Dick*, when each of the crewmen in turn has come to contemplate the
significance of the gold doubloon which Ahab has riveted to the mainmast of
the Pequod, as first the narrative agency, and then the others take a hidden
vantage to observe and recount each subsequent man's apostrophe to the coin:

   "Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire to
   unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what's the consequence? Then
   again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught's nailed to
   the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab! the
   White Whale; he'll nail ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in old
   Tolland country, cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver ring grown
   over it; some old darkey's wedding ring. How did it get there? And
   they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish up the old mast,
   and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the shaggy
   bark. Oh, the gold! the prcious, precious gold!--the green miser'll hoard
   ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes 'mong the world blackberrying. Cook! ho,
   cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get
   your hoe-cake done!"
                          [*Moby Dick* ch 99 'The Doubloon']

The vantage upon vantage motif or technique employed by Melville here is an
important precursor for Pynchon's narrative strategy as well, I think, and
corresponds with the Nietzschean notion of "perspectivism". The
animate/inanimate nexus and prosthesis theme are very apparent in the latter
stages of *Moby Dick*, the chapters with Ahab and the Carpenter later on
particularly so.

Anyone else notice how Rachel has learnt to nail the intersection of the
pavement gratings in the middle of the mall with the point of her high heel?
(44) These X's are two V's attached, or mirrored; and exemplify how Rachel
has learnt to conquer "the Street" which Profane fears so. I think this
empowerement is significant for her critique of Schoenmaker's profession and
(lack of) ethics, which she also nails imo.

best