VV(18): Suicide

[Paul Mackin]

It's all kind of mystical and Freudian and Pynchonian and dialectical. Just
say no to life and somehow accomplish thereby the ultimate act of
affirmation. Will let you all know more about Lulu's demise when I see the
Almeida production of the Wedekind play in a week or so.

                P.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Monroe" <davidmmonroe at hotmail.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 8:56 AM
Subject: VV(18): Suicide


> "The coroner's verdict, charitably, was death by accident.  Perhaps
Melanie,
> exhausted by love, excited as at any premiere, had forgotten.  Adorned
with
> so many combs, bracelets, sequins, she might have become confused in this
> fetish-world and neglected to add to herself the one inanimate object that
> would have saved her.  Itague thought it was suicide ..." (V., Ch. 14,
Sec.
> ii, p. 414)
>
> "The next day her body washed up on the beach." (V., Ch. 9, Sec. iii, p.
> 272)
>
> "Profane thought maybe it was tired of living." (V., Ch. 5, Sec. i, p.
111)
>
> Cf. ...
>
> "I doubt it was only firepower and aggrssiveness that beat the Herero
during
> that 'complex and terrible' time.  I think the Hereros had as much to do
> with it as von Trotha did. [... W.P. Steenkamp, Is the South-West African
> Herero Committing Race Suicide?] attempts [...] to discount the notion,
> apparently widely-held at the time, that the Hereros were deliberately
> trying to exterminate themselves.  But I find that perfectly plausible,
> maybe not as a conscious conspiracy, but in terms of how a perhaps not
> completely Westernized people might respond." ("Letter to Thomas F.
Hisrch,"
> pp. 241-2)
>
> "... there was a tribal mind at work out here, and it had chosen to
> commit suicide." (GR, Pt. III, p. 317)
>
> "... an evil Rocket for the World's suicide." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 727)
>
>
> That last phrase always chokes me up, because, you know, one can easily
> imagine the arms race appearing as such, "maybe not as a conscious
> conspiracy," but ... but I tend to read these other suicides in
allegorical,
> world-historical terms as well.  Let me know ...
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