V.V.(8) sfacim and sewer stories

[Dave Monroe]

This, I believe, was something Charles Hollander pointed out somewhere or 
another, but do note that "sfacim" (V., p. 140 in the Harper Perennial ed. 
I've taken to carrying around now) is an anagram for "fascism."  Which might 
also explain why "The girls" (Italian-American, apparently, "guineas," as 
slurred by Geronimo, "a tourist" [p. 139], an ugly [Native?/]Puerto Rican 
American?), "got all shocked" (p. 140) by this term rather than by 
"sfacimento" ("That's all right then") which, V.'s "In Italian it meant 
destruction or decay" gloss aside, seems indeed to have all sorts of 
possible "shocking," "nasty mouthed" connotations of its own.

Interestingly--and this kind of nigh-unto-fractal detailing is typical of 
these Pynchonian texts, no?--this nom-de-seduction (?) plays on, 
literalizes, Benny's actual name, substituting a couple of apparent, perhaps 
actual profanities for that patronymic (as in "name-of-the-father"? 
"fascism," "semen"--hm, what would Lacan say here ...) "Profane."  Very good 
...

And, while I'm in the vicinity, do note those cyborg, robotic, mechanistic, 
"inanimate" "shiny-machined breast- and buttock-surfaces" (p. 139), 
following closely after "lipstick," that ultimately Baudeliarean association 
of the feminine and the aritificial (see the bit on "maquillage," make-up, 
in CB's The Painter of Modern Life).
"Twitching and hollow-eyed"--tres cybernetique, non?  Those "hollow eyes," 
by the way, uncanny, unheimlich, like darkened windows, or the empty orbits 
of a skull.  Recall that Freud's essay on "The Uncanny" discusses E.T.A. 
Hoffmann's "The Sandman," a story featuring not only artificial eyes, but 
the feminine automata, Olympia 9and cf. the Offenbach ballet, Coppelia, 
after "The Sandman"s Dr. Coppelius, as well).  Again, see ...

Miller Frank, Felicia.  The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice
   and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative.
   Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1995.

... as well as ...

Vidler, Anthony.  The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in
   the Modern Unhomely.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.

But also, "Three jailbait," not only Pynchon's nigh-unto-Nabokovian "thing" 
about nymphetic "subdebs," but note that "wheel of Fortune" as well.  Three 
jailbait, three Moirae, three Fates (and cf. that Remedios Varo painting in 
The Crying of Lot 49), and note that the locus classicus for that "wheel" is 
Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy, coincidentally perhaps but resonantly 
nonetheless written in prison.

Also, that wheel, again, recall the yo-yo, simple harmonic motion, both are 
simple harmonic oscillators ...

http://members.nbci.com/Surendranath/Shm/Shm01.html

http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/tutorials/shm/Q.shm.html

... and note that, just as Benny et al., "moseying slow, casing the jailbait 
at the wheel," "Profane's foot came down on an empty beer can" (interesting, 
though I'm assuming unconscious, resonance there as well, "case," "beer").  
"He started to roll."  As does his own wheel of Fortune? Hm ... "Fortuna" = 
"Fina"?  "Angel and Geronimo, falnking him, caught him bu the arms about 
halfway down," i.e., at the quarter-turn ...


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