V.V.(9) Chapter Seven, part 1 - commentary

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
Did I suggest that "Stencilized" elements of the text should be
ignored?  Heavens no! The Stencil passages are the most interesting
stuff in "V" IMFFHO.  But it is a fiction within the fiction.  We
wonder about Benny's reliability as a perceptual agent and "narrator"
as well, but Stencil is something special: an all-but-entirely
self-constructed and artificially patterned Self, stable only insofar
as he can continue to incorporate random data into the intricate
structure he has invented. Opposed is Benny's disconnected self, his
fantasies of overwhelming disorder and of the sovereign,
indifferent-when-not-hostile Inanimate. The female characters, and the
minor male characters, do not seem to filter the narrative.  They are
interacted with, percieved, and processed by Benny and Stencil in their
several ways.
Mark

--- Michael Perez <studiovheissu at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mark wrote:
> "And so all of these 'V's are Stencils, aren't they, and all of this
> material is filtered through the Stencilian Sieve, if not invented
> whole cloth."
> 
> Yes, but they are also Pynchon's.  While we may be as "dismissive,"
> as
> you say, as Eigenvalue - and I believe we should be for as much as
> reality matters to any of us - they are still a part of the book for
> some reason.  jbor reinforced the importance of the Stencil stories
> to
> whatever we might get from the book in some of his posts, too.  I
> think
> I mentioned at quite a few places in the posts that opened this
> section
> reminding us (I include myself because I *do* get caught up in these)
> that these are filtered a few times - from those that may have told
> Sidney, by Sidney himself, and then by Herbert.  But there they are
> nevertheless.
> 
> Michael
> 
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