V.V. (13) Lhamon

[jbor]

William T. Lhamon Jr's thesis in _Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a 
Cultural Style in the American 1950s_ (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990)
is that there was a coalescing of American "activist" (passim) culture (i.e.
photography, painting, plays, film, Beat literature, jazz and r&b, the Civil
Rights movement) in the mid-50s into a "recognizable aesthetic" (xiv), and
that Pynchon's _V._ is something of a culmination. And, despite his mistaken
contention that "'Mondaugen's Story' is not really Mondaugen's, but Foppl's"
(213), and his neglect of V's (arguably) active role/s in both the telling
thereof *and* the action therein, he does make many perceptive comments
about Pynchon's "parody of modernism" (205) in the novel. For example, he
notes, quite correctly imo, that "Pynchon's send-ups remain ambiguous"
(though I suspect that Lhamon was, at least partially, forced to adopt this
viewpoint in order to maintain his overall thesis in the study):

    Slab's Danishes, Roony Winsome's mock-serious recordings of gang
    warfare and other oddities of the fifties, even Mafia Winsome's Ayn
    Rand-like theory of Heroic Love are topics and concepts perilously
    close to Pynchon's own obsessions -- to his daft songs and yo-yoing
    and filled-prophylactic water bombs. In mocking cheese Danishes
    he is mocking himself and his own crowd. ... (234)

Lhamon addresses the reflexiveness of Pynchon's method -- the elements of
self-parody, the way that Pynchon "scoffs at his own work" (235) -- and this
is something which I agree is distinctive about Pynchon's fiction.

But I think Lhamon underplays, or misapprehends, the significance of V's
indeterminate identity in the text:

    ... Throughout the historical chapters, Pynchon used ["V.'s carved ivory
    comb"] to indicate the continuity of its possessor despite the radical
    gaps in both her personality and story. As her persistent trait, the
    comb distinguishes V. from apparently similar characters (Hedwig
    Vogelsang, for instance). (239)

I think that it's actually the proliferation of V's and V-shapes, both human
and non-human (eg. Veronica the sewer rat, Vheissu, Venus), which makes the
concept of "V" an ultimately (and intentionally) unfixable one.

Lhamon also wrote a review of _GR_ upon its publication, and has been a
long-standing member of the Pynchon critindustry. His review is only so-so,
nowhere near as good as Michael Wood's in the _NY Review of Books_, but he
does emphasise the importance of Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_ for
Pynchon's work:

      In his underground room, the invisible man used the junk of New
    York City (sockets, wire, bummed marijuana) to create a new world of
    meaning; it was a world of gadgetry, of 1369 lightbulbs and planned
    labor-saving devices -- not bad for 1952, but not good enough for the
    invisible man, who returns to street level. In _GR_ the displaced tribe
    of Hereros, also black of course, makes a totem of the German rocket and
    literally a life-giving ritual of reconstructing it from the wastes of
    the war. Theirs is also a furtive underground life, but movable,
    communal. And that is enough for them. They forswear tribal suicide, and
    they forswear any sort of sell-out. They don;t go back in. Pynchon's
    underground rooms are filled with heretical outcasts intrepidly
    performing profound rites ....
                        (Lhamon, 'The Most Irresponsible Bastard', _New
                          Republic_ 168:15, April 14 1973, pp. 24-28)

While his comment that the Hereros "forswear tribal suicide" in _GR_ is
nearly as big a clanger as his contention that Mondaugen's story is entirely
or actually Foppl's in _V._ (obviously, close reading of the texts is not
one of his strong points), the comparisons he makes with Ellison's novel are
indeed apt and important ones. And, that description of "heretical outcasts
intrepidly performing profound rites" would seem to apply to Blicero as much
as it does to Enzian & co.

best