V. & Frankenstein & Pynchon

[Doug Millison]

...I was re-reading Frankenstein and this may be of interest, perhaps, in
the context of the discussion thread about V.'s mechanical attributes.
Frankenstein addresses the asssembly and animation of a living creature; V.
seems to take the reverse approach, addressing the transformation of a
living creature into a machine:


"They talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin,(I speak not of what the
Doctor really did, or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what
was then spoken of as having been done by him,) who preserved a piece of
vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to
move with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given.
Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such
things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured,
brought together, and endured with vital warmth. "
--Mary Shelley, from her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein,
or the Modern Prometheus


Pynchon talks about Frankenstein in his 1984 essay, Is it O.K. to be a
Luddite?http://www.libyrinth.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html
"If there were such a genre as the Luddite novel, this one, warning of what
can happen when technology, and those who practice it, get out of hand,
would be the first and among the best. Victor Frankenstein's creature also,
surely, qualifies as a major literary Badass. "I resolved. . . ," Victor
tells us, "to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to say, about
eight feet in height, and proportionately large," which takes care of Big.
The story of how he got to be so Bad is the heart of the novel, sheltered
innermost: told to Victor in the first person by the creature himself, then
nested inside of Victor's own narrative, which is nested in its turn in the
letters of the arctic explorer Robert Walton. However much of Frankenstein's
longevity is owing to the undersung genius James Whale, who translated it to
film, it remains today more than well worth reading, for all the reasons we
read novels, as well as for the much more limited question of its Luddite
value: that is, for its attempt, through literary means which are nocturnal
and deal in disguise, to deny the machine."

V. for Victor!

In that same introduction, Mary Shelley sounds a theme that P has talked
about more than once in his essays and introductions, the theme of a writer
finding inspiration in dreams or in a dream-like state:

"As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me
for recreation, was to "write stories." Still I had a dearer pleasure than
this, which was the formation of castles in the air -- the indulging in
waking dreams -- the following up trains of thought, which had for their
subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were
at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings. [...] Night waned
upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by, before we retired to
rest. When I place my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be
said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting
the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the
usual bounds of reverie. I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision,
-- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he
had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and
then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir
with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely
frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous
mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist;
he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope
that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated
would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation,
would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the
silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the
hideous corpse  which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps;
but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his
bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but
speculative eyes. I opened mine in terror. "
--Mary Shelley, from her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein,
or the Modern Prometheus


"It is of course precisely in such episodes of mental traveling that writers
are known to do good work, sometimes even their best, solving formal
problems, getting advice from Beyond, having hypnagogic adventures that with
luck can be recovered later on. Idle dreaming is often of the essence of
what we do. We sell our dreams."
http://www.libyrinth.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html

In his Slow Learner intro (I don't have it online here), P might be
understood to imply that at a certain point in time he did gain access to
his dreams and that this had an impact on his writing:

" Having as yet virtually no access to my dream life, I missed the main
point of the movement, and became fascinated instead with the simple idea
that one could combine inside the same frame elements not normally found
together to produce illogical and startling effects." "
--quoted by KATHLEEN IUDICELLO in INTRUDING WORLDS AND THE EPILEPTIC WORD:
PYNCHON'S DIALOGUE WITH THE LAWS OF SURREALISM AND NEW PHYSICS,  Oklahoma
City University Law Review, Number 3 (1999) 
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/iudicello24.htm#*