VV(7) - 1

[Terrance]

Lots to discuss, DM, Yeah, but I mast admit Ivan has take
the wind out of me sails. 

I'm not certain that we can derive definitive answers or
explanations. Not that we would want to, need to. We will
need to spoil a bit of Chapter Six and a little bit of
Father Fairing's history, but I doubt that this will sour
the story for anyone here. I won't do that in this post
however. 

I think it may be productive, worth our labor nonetheless,
to consider the "fictional anomalies" here. Textual
contradiction (i.e., volunteers/paid and Union labor) being
but one example volunteered. 

1. The Alligators have only been down there for a year or
two.

GOD (as in Pirate's Bananas, where only GOD knows the
meshes of their mysterious fecundity), only knows how many
Alligators are now in the sewer. 

What's up with the Great Sewer Scandal of 1955?

Well, I don't think we had a Great Sewer Scandal in NYC in
1955, but any Great Scandal, in any great city, should
include Labor Politics. Labor politics is an important topic
here in V. and in all of P's work.  We've had Great Garbage
Scandals, Great School Custodian Scandals, and all matter of
Great Union/nonunion Labor Scandals in NYC. In Chapter Five
we learn that from the GSS of 1955 the department had
developed a passion for honesty and that dead alligators
were wanted. What were they doing down in the sewers prior
to this new passion for honesty? Were they not killing
alligators? Well, maybe they were not even going down in the
sewers to kill Alligators and rats, maybe they were
slacking, drinking on the job, wasting materials, feeling
sorry for the poor creatures, keeping them selves in a job.
Once all the Alligator population has been depleted, the
Labor force would in turn be reduced. 

The boys on the Shuttle, Kook, Tolito, Jose, introduce the
idea that Benny should, or wants to,  Hunt Alligators. These
kids know a bum, a yo-yoing bum,  when they see one. 
When Benny goes hunting for women (these guys, Geronimo,
Angel, get drunk and not laid), they tell him that under the
street you don't see anything, no women, no people down
there,  they imply. 

Whereas earlier, when the boys suggested he hunt alligators,
Benny asked if the work was steady, here he is interested in
going under the Street, where of course he assumes there are
no women, not much in the way of the human and inanimate
clutter. 

 The baby Alligators have been flushed down the toilet. We
should discuss the tri-levelled construction (with Polarity
reversals) here. As in GR, Slothrop's harp down the toilet
showing up in the river,  the classical inversion of nether
and Olympian worlds and the turning earth and eventual
reversal
of the  earth's poles. But in any event, these levels are
connected by conduits, physical, material and magical or
spiritual or immaterial. 

No longer an amusement, toys manufactured and sold, by Macys
to children, the Alligators are flushed into a manufactured
environment, where they mature and wax even as their spirits
seem to wane. The alligators in some respects remind me of
the various groups in P's fiction, taken form or colonized
from their environment and culture and of course,  SOS, and
that lemming and the lemmings. 

The moon continues to be Benny's spherical predominance,
heavenly compulsion. (P's use of light in V. is not as
complicated as in GR, but the moonlight, sunlight, flash and
flashing photo film light, green light, pink light and so
on... is worth noting). 

At that critical point when Angel,
drunk on the job, goes up through the manhole, leaving Benny
solo, note that he pink light of the sky is crescented by
the
manhole cover. 

In terms of the calendar time of the plot here, A and G have
been on Patrol longer than anyone else, three months longer
in fact, and it seems that the GSS of 1955, which caused the
department to get conscientious and call for volunteers,
broke while they were on patrol. I can't say this for sure,
but I think it is a reasonable assumption, and I can provide
some evidence of this. The tax calendar in Chapter Six etc.
The volunteers get to carry the guns and shoot the
Alligators. This may be one of the things that lure these
bums, nonunion workers discharged from the Services, to go
fishing with dynamite or volunteer to kill alligators and
rats with shotguns. They work in pairs, one bum, one
employee? 

Ever see that Monty Python episode, the one where they hunt
mosquitoes with rockets? 

In any event, Benny is on a different calendar altogether.
We can construct the calendar thus far from Chapters 1-6.
Don't have time to do this now, but Benny is on a different
time, Benny's idiosyncratic moon calendar affects the world
he
inhabits. 

Turn back to Chapter One part V. It is January 1956, but it
is not Winter, but a spell of false Spring. 

The yo-yo thing again, Dave Monroe's diagram, but I'll get
to that up and down east and west.  Benny goes Downtown
(leaving Paola at 34st Street, with R's  address, a job
connection, she'll take the IRT up the West side and end up
living with R--contrast Rachel/Eesther w Fina), to Our Home
flop and uptown to get a newspaper, find a yob.  He goes up
town to stay with Fina and 
ends up back downtown at the end of Chapter Six.  

He wakes up very early in the AM and decides to yo-yo bum on
the Shuttle, the Shuttle goes back and forth,  cross town or
east and west. On the Shuttle he is visited, as he is prone
to, on a lunar basis, unspecific waves of horniness,
emerging
from these spells he wishes he could rotate his head through
the full 360 degrees. The Spring, the false  Spring turns to
a tourist's Summer, as the affluent commuters, most of the
from the Burbs, bring in the Summer (the sun, as in GR is
Olympian, the Rocket's, affluence, power, control). 

And after they are all in their work stations, the residents
emerge, bringing with them the Fall. The time is also here,
the clock that is, is measured by the transits of the
Shuttle. Benny will end up going up town and out to
Riverside to hunt women, where he 
will fall in the frozen grass, Winter again, the False
Spring seems to be over. 


What happened in labor history on August 13, 1922? 
Was it Brownsville Brooklyn of Texas?
Don't know, but it might be an important date. 

I can't quite get the Vietnam connection Dave. 
But the chapter, the Hunter-Killer Central, and so on, is
certainly Couched in combat. 
They are taken in to a branch of the payroll department
after the FCC complaints.
Spugo gets a pension out in Queens where marijuana grows
wild, I guess folks toss seed about, although it is
difficult to grow weed out of doors in Queens, must be
hardy. But he gets a pension, so he was an employee and not
a volunteer. 

The boss has AF of L delusions of high purpose, he is a
civil servant but one day he will be Walter Reuther (see
Britannica.com) gives his pep talk, his nonunion Pride pep
talk, after the reduction in ammo allotment,  in the
February
rain. Benny has been on the job two weeks. The bums here
think the boss is poor and innocent, but he's got Sharkskin
suits, not J. Press suits  like R's old man, Stuyvesant  and
Sphere.
They know that getting paid with Pride alone, is worthless,
can't exchange it like a beer bottle for a pennny deposit,
but they buy into the pride patrol, not Benny, he could care
less, it's a job, but in chapter 6, I think, we can see that
A and G are getting paid, but Benny's job is wageless labor. 


http://www.brooklyn.net/neighborhoods/brownsville.html

Some other related topics to consider might include: 

How these anomalies are compounded by stylistic conflict and
contrast. 
And by the fluid though often radical shifts in narrative
perspective (jbor). 
The  "carnival characteristics" of the novel.
The "quest motif" (specifically the confluence of Stencil's
quest and Benny's chase.
How the quest motif probes, questions, and subverts
Philosophical, Theological "truths." 
The Psychological (including the Psychology attributed to
the Alligator, the Jung commentary we have been reading
here, but also Freud and that Eros/Thantatos again--the
musical allusions Dave Monroe notes and Cowart. The double,
merging characters. 
The Scandal of Bush's former nominee for Labor secretary, a
National issue, if not International.


David Morris wrote:
> 
> Lots of question.  Got any answers?
> 
> >From: Terrance <The Riddler>
> >
> >What is the deal? What's Benny's deal? What's Gironimo's
> >deal? Angel's deal? The one beggar's deal? Mississippi's?
> >What's the deal for the other bums? The migratory workers?
> >What about V.A. ("Brushhook") Spugo?
> >
> >The Alligators have only been down there for a year or two.
> >What's up with the Great Sewer Scandel of 1955? Some are
> >getting paid. Aren't they? Uncle Sam would like to know, I'm
> >sure, but can we know? Maybe we have to add a few things up.
> >Days. What calendars should we use? The Chapter we are
> >reading, it happens to be Chapter 5 (VV boys, that's an
> >omen, cut the BS and talk Pynchon ;-), is Chapter five ~ In
> >which Stencil nearly goes West with an alligator V. Nearly
> >goes West? Stencil with an alligator? What's that all about?
> >What's with the East side West side? The Uptown Downtown?
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
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