Slothrop & the Rocket

[Herr Teufeldröcke]

Mali's is farther than I have taken the effort to figure out Slothrop's
penis in such a manner, and it's a very good job, particularly the
theory of Shell's guidance beam.

I can't find where, but I remember that Slothrop thinks about his making
up of that map that started it all, a natural Poisson distribution, just
like the inaccuracies of the rocket. Although this suggests that
correspondence between Slothrop's penis and the rocket arises more from
the observer's perception (or desire, or paranoia), I do offer a pair of
quotations that may support Mali's argument:

page 513--
   "I'm serious. It's your Schwarzphänomen."
   "Quit fooling."
   "You don't even know about it. It choreographs you. Mine's always
trying to _destroy_ me. We should be exchanging _those_, instead of uniforms."

page 752--
Plasticman will lose his way among the Imipolex chains, and topologists
all over the Zone will run out and stop payments on his honorarium
checks ("perfectly deformable," indeed!).

(It may be significant that Pynchon writes Plasticman as one word -- the
comic book uses two.)

Auf der anderen Seite, the first quotation comes from a very stoned
Tchitcherine who if he really knows anything about it the information
comes from the same sources driving Pointsman, and the second is part of
Poinstman's realizing his failure, that _he_ is Plasticman, no longer
real, that Slothrop has won.

Slothrop's problem may be that he is _not_ the schwarzknabe some would
have him be . . . he wants to _live_ . . . he has to leave this world
that clothes him so . . .

--
Diogenes T.