VV (20) The Xebec

[jbor]

on 7/15/01 2:18 PM, Samuel Moyer at smoyer at satx.rr.com wrote:

> What is it about Malta that attracts V., Astarte, Mara to it?  >

And, Pynchon as well:

    This Maltese material is used for the background details in the
    'Epilogue 1919' to V. In a letter to his editor Corlies Smith,from
    Seattle dated June 2 1962, Pynchon wrote of placing this material at the
    end of the book, as it did not fit any other place, and it was his
    favorite chapter.

http://www.pynchonfiles.com/datavallett.htm

I think it's interesting that Pynchon wrote that "it did not fit any other
place" in the novel. I think David might have asked about who was narrating
this Epilogue. I doubt that it is H. Stencil, because then he would have
known for sure that his dad and V. had been lovers (488-489), and that she
was thus -- almost certainly -- his mother. And, when Sidney Stencil thinks
to himself "His father, ha." (at 489.27), I get the impression that he
discovered that Victoria was having affairs while she was with him, and that
*he* thinks Herbert isn't his own son, even though he has maintained the
father-son charade in the interim since Victoria left him.

And perhaps an even greater shock is when Fausto's dad says "My wife has her
child" (at 490.3 up), "her" meaning Veronica, and which is perhaps why
Fausto had told young Stencil that they were brothers (444), because Fausto
*did* know the full story. In what sense young Fausto is Veronica's child
isn't made clear, but it seems to me that there might have been some
double-dealing (blackmail, bribery etc) going on between Veronica, Carla and
Fausto's dad which even Sidney wasn't aware of, and which is why she "kept
him only as long as she had to" (492.6).

So, I don't think the younger Stencil is the narrator. Like Benny, Herbert
was "disposed" of in the last chapter of the novel proper, off to Stockholm
to seek after "the frayed end of another clue" (452), actively perpetuating
the wild goose chase mainly because he fears its resolution. (I wonder if
there is some sort of Sweden-Eden thing going on with Stencil, as with Orr
and Yossarian at the end of _Catch-22_ -- a nod by Pynchon to Heller's
novel, perhaps, or some sort of anti-nod, a recognition that the sort of
blithe utopianism with which Heller's novel closes is in fact a cop-out?)

Anyway, it seems to me that this Epilogue is being narrated by a new voice,
is in fact a return to the detached third-person narrative of the
traditional realist novel. The reference to the Board of Inquiry Report and
the bringing forward of the historical info. on Maltese sovereignty and
self-determination to the present day at 491-2 seems to confirm this also.

> I see a lot
> of similarity in Fausto and Mehemet, or at least in the way they think of
> Malta.  Anyway, I hope we can look at Mara and V. in this Epilogue soon.

Thanks for tracing the link from Astarte through Ishtar and Venus. I think
we can perhaps add Mara, Valetta, and V. to that lineage also, as well as,
perhaps ...

Stencil fears not the arrival of "the Son" i.e. a man like Jesus or Mizzi,
who will invoke revolution and war, but the coming of a "Paraclete".
(480.20)

paraclete n. Rare. a mediator or advocate

Paraclete n. Christianity. the Holy Ghost as comforter or advocate (C15: via
Old French from Church Latin *Paracletus*, from Late Greek *Paracletos*
advocate, from Greek *parakalein* to summon as a helper, from para- +
*kalein* to call)

And, I think what he fears is that V. (as Veronica Manganese) might be just
that Paraclete.

So, fertility ... sensual love/extramarital sex/promiscuity ... warlike
goddess ... drawn to the hero ... mediator ... comforter ... advocate ...

I'm coming around more and more to that "essence of womanhood" idea.

I wonder if anyone has seen Dana Medoro's essay 'Traces of Blood and the
Matter of a Paraclete's Coming: The Menstrual Economy of Pynchon's _V._',
which was slated for publication in _Pynchon Notes_ at one time and which
sounds very interesting in this respect? Dana used to contribute here I
think.

----------

Much of what we get in this 'Epilogue' is a further dialectic on history:
Stencil pere, Carruthers-Pillow, Mehemet, Fausto's dad, Fausto's mum, Fra
Fairing et al. talk about what they think history is, what it means etc.

The immediate context is the recent Armistice after WWI: the Great War, "the
war to end all wars". Stencil expresses his cynical attitude to this right
up front: "Armistice. Ha!" (458.5, passim) It's an attitude which the events
of the next 80-odd years (many of them referenced and depicted in the
preceding pages of the novel), have certainly borne out.

S. Stencil makes a couple of interesting comments on the topic of history:
his rejected _Punch_ article entitled 'The Situation as an N-Dimensional
Mishmash' which is quoted from at the bottom of p. 470 places its author
very much in the same league with Nietzsche's perspectivism; and his
rumination on Valetta being assumed again into the "textual stillness of her
own history" (474.33) resonates with later Derridean notions of the world as
text. ("Il n'y a pas de hors texte.")

S. Stencil ponders:

       The inert universe may have a quality we call logic. But logic
    is a human attribute after all, so even at that it's a misnomer. What
    are real are the cross-purposes. ... (484.4)

He predicts that "[h]enceforth politics would become progressively more
democratized, more thrown into the hand of amateurs. The disease would
progress. ... " (484.4 up)

I tend to think Pynchon leans towards these views too.

At the end of the text old Stencil, the narrative -- and any possible
definitive answer to the questions of "who or what is V." -- are consumed by
the V-shaped waterspout which sucks the Mehemet's xebec into the
Mediterranean deep. Like Evan Godolphin's (see 97-101) last words spoken
through tears, such things are lost forever. "History", answers, meaning,
resolution -- all of these, quite literally, go 'up the spout'.

best