Rocket(s) & Savagery.7

[Paul Mackin]

The reason I said W is a civil servant of the state (more literally a
MILITARY servant) was to emphasize his duality--that he embraces polar
opposites. He is both an ordinary member of society carrying out 
ordinary roles--existing under the constrants and unfreedom society
necessarily inposes--AND AT THE SAME TIME totally off on his own
dream. Most all of us are comprised of this kind of duality to some degree
but W becomes a myth. The fact that the society of which W is a part
has a very bad rep (the Nazi thing) adds to the interest. But it's the out
of the ball park dream that drives the story--the dream to embrace
death in life--or something like that. 

				P.


On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:

> 
> 
> Paul Mackin wrote:
> > >
> > 
> > P indulges in a funny sort of characterization.  Abstract and at the same
> > time quite corporeal. The sex is well fleshed out. With Weissmann
> > dualities reign supreme. On the one hand he's an ordinary civil
> > servant carrying out assignments at his country's bidding. But he is the
> > exact opposite in his apparent refusal to let the normal contraints of
> > finite being hold him back. This makes him hard to cotton up to as a
> > fellow human being. He's just not like us.
> 
> There are, what?, three I think, at least three different
> descriptions of Weissmann's transformation and Blicero's
> transcendence. None of them anything like a fellow human
> being. Blicero and Greta are fabulous figures, corruptions
> of deities. The scientist/mystics await his presence at the
> castle where the blood of christ is co-opted as a polymer
> for the cartel. 
> 
> Weissmann is a man, I'll grant that, he's human, we must, I
> think, insist that he is human, but I don't read him as a
> simple civil servant doing his job anymore than I read
> Pointy as such.  And all of the ideas, the
> Freudian/Brown/Marcuse Father Imago, the Weberian charisma,
> the history of the Nazis, Dora, the role he plays at the
> siege party, giving the genocide to V., his role as the
> prototype of the Party's reading of Rilke, his  sex roles.
> Plastic strap on.  In this fiction, this novel, this story,
> sex, S&M, Sodomy, Plastic, function symbolically and the
> theme here is anti-nature, anti-life, anti-other.
>