VV (19) Disposal of Profane/Brenda

[Samuel Moyer]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>


> on 7/15/01 3:27 AM, Samuel Moyer at smoyer at satx.rr.com wrote:

> > Does anyone doubt that Profane and Brenda commit suicide?  Page 455:
> >
> > Hand in hand with Brenda... Profane ran down the street.....  Profane
and
> > Brenda continued to run through the abruptly absolute night, momentum
alone
> > carrying them toward the edge of Malta, and the Mediterranean beyond.
>
> That wasn't what occurred to me at all. They are near the "sea steps", the
> street was "level and clear". I sort of thought they just went for a
> midnight swim.
>

Well the words: run, momentum, toward the mediterranean beyond...   I don't
know.... TRP doesn't leave a lot of absolute conclusions in this book... It
seemed to suggest to me that they never stopped... They had both sort of
come to the end of the line...

> > Brenda writes peotry:
> >
> > "I am the twentieth century," she read.  Profane rolled away and stared
at
> > the pattern in the rug.
>
> I think Brenda's poem encapsulates the essential theme of the novel, but
it
> does so in a sort of self-parodic way. It's very sophomoric and
pretentious,
> and she is a bit of a twit, but it's exactly the vision of the increasing
> inanimacy of human life the novel has been illustrating.
>
> Profane's reaction to the poem is perhaps the same reaction he had to
> Stencil's obsession, and in a way both Stencil's (and, indeed, Pynchon's)
> vision of some grand cabal might just be pretentious nonsense after all,
> like a "paper airplane" or "a phony college-girl poem".
>
> But there's also a big maybe there, which I think you capture quite well.
> The pattern in the rug *has* been designed, and so the possibility
persists
> that maybe there is a design to history after all -- seems to me to be
what
> is suggested here.
>
> (I think you're onto something with the Henry James allusion too btw.
> Hopefully someone will pick up on it.)

I hope so... I am not a big Henry James fan, but I think TRP was a reader of
HJ.  But I hadn't thought of the design to history angle... you and I have
discussed this before back in chapter 11 and elsewhere - It is one of the
most interesting themes for me in the novel.

I keep looking over her poem (page 454) and can't come up with anything.
Inanimate is good... but seems that there must be more... some connection...
or again... I am reaching...  The repetition of "I am" is interesting....
Like that game where you have to guess who she is... but I don't see any
connection (other than inanimacy) between these objects.

Or more is less - it is just a phony college girl poem.  Then, as you say,
it is parallel to Stencil and Profane's search.  Although I am not sure what
Profane searches for.  Stencil clearly is grasping at straws when he takes
off for Stockholm... he even says that V. cannot be dead...

Well... more to think about, Cheers, sam