Sloth-rop (was Re: Holocaust as metaphor?

[jbor]

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>From: jporter <jp4321 at IDT.NET>
>

> Sundial may be a self-portrayal of colonial *will* (eventually to
> father both Archer and Theale) appropriately grandiose for the comic book
> sensitive

Slothrop's 'pre-ordained' or infinitely recurring loss is described as a
failure of both "perception" and of "will" -- "(you used to know what these
words mean)" taunts the narrative agency at its 'post-structuralist' reader.
Slothy can't see that Bianca is his (only?) chance to "hide out" in, (though
perhaps not to "get off") the allegorical doom-ship; and he doesn't have the
strength of mind or character to stay with her when she asks him to as that
uncomfortable post-orgasmic funk descends upon him.

> It's _The Art of Fiction_  in an accelerated frame,

And there's also more than a touch of _The Sacred Fount_ as well in this
extreme narratorial self-consciousness, these recurrent satires on the
process -- the very possibility -- of detached narration ... masks and the
'real'; the possible 'madness' of art as it always seeks to fix its gaze
beyond the immediate and apparent; the vulnerability of love &c.

Just recalled that the "boxtop and its image" distinction has a resonance
with those Kute Korrespondences later on also ("so much replication, so much
waste") ... But the narrator's meta-rebuttal of Slothrop's treason or
gullibility is framed in political-ideological terms: "their whole economy's
based on *that* . . . but she must be more than an image, a product, a
promise to pay. . . . "

Are we here talking about his (and our) being suckered and snookered by that
beguiling, but ultimately hollow, cornucopia which is consumer capitalism?

best