On another note: Slothrop and the Rockets

[calbert at tiac.net]

MalignD:

> And as the plastic "[entangles] with [his] bones and ducts," he is
> bleached out, like Blicero, into the polymer's "brilliant
> transparency." 
> 
> Slothrop's disappearance is, then, not merely metaphorical: it is
> actual.
> 
> So I think.

Thank you , Sir. May I have another?

Why not? Seems like a kind of counterpoint to the passage in V 
where P describes the tragically misguided efforts to rebuild the 
faces of burned pilots. Unlike IG, the hosts reject the implants with a 
destructive ferocity.

"Thus Godolphin received a nose bridge of ivory, a cheekbone of 
silver and a paraffin and celluloid chin. A month later Shoenmaker 
went to visit him in the hospital - the last time he ever saw Godolphin. 
The reconstruction had been perfect......(he) spoke with a grim 
flippancy. 

"Take a long look. It won't be good for more than six months." 
Shoenmaker stammered: Godolphin continued: "See him, down the 
way?"....."Foreign body reaction, they call it. Sometimes infection, 
inflammation, sometimes only pain. The paraffin, for instance, 
doesn't hold shape. Before you know it, you're back where you 
started......Perhaps I can pawn my cheekbone. It's worth a fortune. 
Before they melted it down it was one of a set of pastoral figurines, 
eighteenth century - nymphs, shepherdesses- looted from a chateau 
the Hun was using for a CP; Lord knows where they're originally 
from - ...."


 
Did anyone else read the NYRB article on Chauncey Wright (sp?)? 
Another possible source of P's "cosmology".

love,
cfa, who misses der Wiener and Miss Sherwood somethin' fierce