V.V. (13) Lhamon

[Dave Monroe]

Just catching up on the last couple of days of
proceedings here, so just some quick notes ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> I think Lhamon contends that there are six
> personifications of V., each of
> whom is explicitly identified by "her" possession of
> that comb. However,
> nowhere in the text is Vera Meroving mentioned as
> owning or having the comb
> in her keeping (Lhamon even provides the page
> numbers where the comb is
> referred to in the novel: only Victoria Wren, the
> Bad Priest of Valetta, and
> Paola, are described as having the comb in their
> possession). Lhamon
> discounts Hedwig Vogelsang's V-status on this basis
> of non-comb-possession,
> and by implication seems to want to include Vera
> Meroving, but it is an
> attempt to discriminate between the various
> V-characters and manifestations
> on the basis of evidence which is not in fact
> present in the text.
> 
> I think the comb might be just another red herring
> in Stencil's (and the
> reader's) quest for meaning, a tantalising detail
> which promises some
> concrete revelation of identity or symbolic
> signification, but which, in the
> long run, doesn't provide any such thing, a detail
> which in fact merely adds
> to the ultimate indeterminacy of "V".

Perhaps on principle, I have trouble withnthis notion
of "red herrings," "macguffins," whatever in those
Pynchonian texts, and not in the least because of the
constant problematization, overt, foregrounded, or
otherwise, of "sorting," of separating "information"
from "non-informtaion," the significant from the
non-significant, et al.  Although one might perhaps
apply recursively that caveat about "If they can get
you to ask the wrong questions ..." ... but I tend to
think prehpas that V., that Vheissu, that The
Trystero, that all these little quests in those
Pynchonian texts AREN'T there to be (re)solved,
although much of interest will be produced in the
(vain, but hardly futile) attempt to do so anyway. 
Will look into that Lehan book, which I wasn't aware
of ...  

> > And still astounded
> > that Lhamon's "PP&P" didn't come up on the Infonet
> > here, though it didn't help that I searched every
> word
> > beginning with "P" BUT "Pentecost" and
> "Promiscuity."
> 
> Yes, ironic in that you've more than proved your
> facility with the keyword
> search function of an on-line library catalogue here
> ...

And speaking of problematics, past experience leads me
to suspect a wisecrack of some sort in there, but I
will note that (a) I'm typically familiar, at least,
with every reference that I post; (b) I note as much
when I'm not; and (c) I STILL can't come up with an
online reference to that Lhamon essay, even with the
title at hand, which certainly DOES exist, of course. 
Always drives me nuts when no one goes to the trouble
to list the contents of anthologies ...

But, hey, here's something that turned up whilst I
took a quick look here ...

http://spinoza.tau.ac.il/hci/pub/poetics/art/mod6.html

I honestly think the Internet is more useful--and I DO
mean "useful" here, this is not a bad thing--in
finding things you WEREN'T looking for sometimes ...


Gotta get Clifford Mead online here ...
> 
> best
> 
> 


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