Chasing ... Cutting

Terrance Flaherty lycidas2 at earthlink.net
Tue Sep 5 17:33:53 CDT 2000


jbor wrote:
> 
> ----------
> >From: "Terrance Flaherty" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> 
> > OK, If you want to we can discuss your statement: "Blicero
> > is the character most venerated in the narrative."
> 
> ... by other characters. I'd say he is, wouldn't you?

OK, by other characters, sorry I though you were suggesting
something else. Of course he is venerated by other
characters. This is an important point. 
> 
> > 1. Why is Marvy the exception to the no good guy bad guy
> > reading you propose?
> 
> I find Marvy despicable, though, also, a stereotype: I can see very little
> attempt to "humanise" this character as the other main characters invariably
> are. Jeremy said it well when he described Marvy as "evil comic relief".
> When critics talk about the cartoon-like characters in Pynchon's novels it
> is Marvy who most quickly springs to mind. We don't get inside Marvy's head
> at any point: he seems to have no doubts, no conscience, no consciousness to
> speak of. Even Brock Vond is given moments of these. Marvy's castration is
> poetic justice: a romanticised resolution of the "problem" this character
> poses (for society, in history, to the text etc).

Yes, Pynchon's Parodic resolution. 



> 
> >
> > 2. Why do the Dora homosexuals experience their freedom as
> > banishment rather than liberation?
> 
> I'm not sure that this is quite true. These emotive terms you are bandying
> about really don't register with the actuality of the situation as
> represented in the text, or even historical "reality". 

I don't know you mean by "these emotive terms" I am bandying
about?

Banishment? That's the term of the text 665. 

What would life have
> been like for homosexual men (let alone women) at this time in Germany or
> elsewhere in Europe? Anywhere, in fact? The term "banishment" tries to imply
> that they somehow enjoyed the time they spent in the prison camp: I don't
> think this can be supported by the text. Upon liberation this is simply what
> these men did. They wouldn't have had "freedom" as such prior to their
> internment and they probably recognised that they wouldn't get "freedom" as
> such upon liberation: they no doubt recognised that the war wasn't about Gay
> Rights at all. 

See 665.39 "Their 'liberation' was a banishment."  

And so, they opt for segregation: they simply adopt the
> tiered authority structure which was in place at Dora to regulate their own
> community. Probably because it functioned efficiently. 

Yes, they opt for segregation, but do they adopt the system
because it is efficient? No, that doesn't sound right, does
it? 

They attempt to set
> up a little "utopia" of their own, just like the Herero Empty Ones or the
> Argentine anarchists who have organised some sort of cosmopolitan
> film/commune. But, as the narrative noted then:
> 
>      It isn't the strangest village in the Zone. Squalidozzi has come in out
>    of his wanderings with tales of Palestinian units strayed all the way
>    from Italy, who've settled down farther east and started up Hasidic
>    communes, on the pattern of a century and a half ago. There are onetime
>    company towns come under the fleet and jittery rule of Mercury, dedicated
>    now to a single industry, mail delivery, eastward and back, in among the
>    Soviets and out, 100 marks a letter. One village in Mecklenburg has been
>    taken over by army dogs. ... (613-4)
> 
> In each case what it is is self-determination par excellence ("anarchy
> ...?"); all these mini-nations are doomed, of course (remember how Slothrop
> "is as properly constituted a state as any other in the Zone these days" too
> at 291.4); for *we* know what comes next. They don't, however, though the
> portents are there (those Russian MPs and Polish guerillas at 668-9).

Right all good examples, I can tie into this once we get the
175s settled.



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