vv2

[Otto Sell]

Good posts, CJ and Robert

binary oppositions in vv2: reversed oppositions - it's undecideable which is
the "higher" pole of the opposition, from another perspective everything
changes.

cj hurtt wrote:
"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. (...) another juxtaposition"

The juxtaposition of Dewey and Profane.
Dewey's an airborne, his profession is jumping out of the sky down to earth,
"turning more zebralike" (black and white) as he climbs up to sing his song.
A song about the major opposition of being born and dying.
Benny, a sailor, is a yo-yo, unable to take a static point, takes one here
temporarily and becomes observer. Like a god. Sitting above the scene,
watching people celebrating the double threshold of a new day/year with
dancing, singing, drinking and making love, we get told the scene between
preterite Bodine and an elect Admiral's lady.

"pynchon does appear to be sympathetic to those who enjoy a good night of
drinking and/or fucking now and again"
It's Profane who likes to "see young people get together." Pynchon's diction
"copulation directly below" is very neutral, almost clinical.

Is this a simple sailor's party or is it more to be seen as something like
"rites and ceremonies in which the meaning of group life was consummated"  -
in the classical sense where our arts derive from? (words by John Dewey, The
Art of Experience, p. 7) - it's group life and Benny doesn't really belong.

A seagull at Benny's side which seems to know that this one doesn't mean any
danger.
What are birds standing for? In symbolism transcendence, the soul, ghosts of
the dead, godly relevations, higher level of consciousness, the thinking,
imagination, messengers of the gods.
Who is talking to the birds? Franz of Assisi of course comes to mind, but
there's more. Often birds accompany the hero on his quest. His ability to
understand their language is a metaphor for his connection with the higher
forces.
But this seagull is silent. Benny is no god and there are no flashes. He
cannot even make Dewey sing the right song. The police comes and the party's
on the "squatted" ship is over.

aphelion vs apocheir, the cosmic yo-yo: it's all a matter of perspective.
When Norfolk is Benny's apocheir (p. 9), than New York is his aphelion (p.
36).

Profane is, according to Heinz Ickstadt, a notorical drifter, passively
taking what comes along. No plan of life, no human bounds. His place is "the
street" - the unstructured presence of direct experience. Though he's unable
to get into real human relations himself he's neurotically fixed on, a
"prophet" of  "the reign of the inanimate" - the world of things beginning
to dominate humanity. Benny's sensitive for "every symptom of the increasing
loss of humanity" (Ickstadt). He's tormented by the nightmare of his own
demontage.
Great observation that Moby Dick navel-doubloon, Robert.

p. 37: "(...) spend the day like a yo-yo, shuttling on the subway back and
forth underneath 42nd street, from Times Square to Grand Central and vice
versa." - who would not dream of doing so one day - you lucky New York
p-listers. But what is aphelion, what apocheir here? All a matter of
perspective.

"(...) hot and cold in random patterns"

Mythic Heroism and Urban Legends
Benny's "dragon" will be the alligators in the sewers. Another "sign" of his
herohood: he has to go underground to fulfill his "task" of slaying the
monster. But a gator is no monster and Benny no real hero. This is what else
he got in common with Slothrop.
I remember Jeannie Bernier's post from June 21 this year, providing this
url:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/alligator_statenisland00061
5.html
and the 2:10 mp3 of Atease playing "Alligators in New York Sewers" but it's
such a poor quality that I cannot understand the lyrics.

Otto