Blicero

[jbor]

----------
>From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
>

> It's easy to demonstrate that this scene (pp. 757-758, under the
> heading The Clearing) is narrated by a third-person narrator who
> takes Blicero's point of view.

Or, indeed, an omniscient narrator (i.e. objective, detached) who knows what
Blicero and the other men at the clearing are and are not thinking.

> The action and dialogue all center on
> Blicero.

    "Ist Klar." In the lights from the panel Max's face is hard, stubborn
    gold.                       (757.25)

    [ ... ]

    "Ist Klar," from Moritz at the rocket motor panel. Into the phone
    dangling at his neck, he tells the Operations Room, "Luflage klar."
                                (757.28)

And so on. The action and dialogue in the scene are fairly evenly
distributed between Blicero, Max and Moritz.

> The only character whose thoughts are revealed are
> Blicero's.  How does the narrator know that "There ought to be big
> dramatic pauses here", that "Weissmann's head ought to be teeming
> with last images of creamy buttocks knotted together in fear (not one
> trickle of shit, Liebchen?) the last curtain of gold  lashes over
> young eyes pleading"  if not because the narrator is in fact looking
> out at the world from Blicero's point of view?

That's the whole point isn't it? These "ought to" be Blicero's thoughts, but
they aren't.

> Here goes that
> narrator getting even deeper into Blicero's POV:  "(but what's this
> just past the spasming cervix, past the Curve Into The Darkness The
> Stink The . . . The White . . . The Corner . . . Waiting . . .
> Waiting For--).
>
> "But no, the ritual has its velvet grip on them all. So strong, so
> warm. . . ."                     (758.2)
>
> "But no" -- another indicator that we're in Blicero's POV, which
> might have continued to follow that "Curve Into The Darkness" but
> which instead turns away to focus on the ritual at hand, and save for
> later the masturbatory fantasy that will come in so handy.

The sentence ends: "on them all". The sentence is outside the parenthesis.
Punctuation, grammar, sense: all indicate that the reference goes back to
the opening sentences of the paragraph: "There ought ... " etc

> In my opinion it takes some stretching to claim this all comes from
> "a detached perspective" or to distinguish the way the third person
> narrator settles on Blicero's POV here from the very similar way that
> the third person narrator settles on Marvy's POV in the scene with
> the prostitute.

       ... Weissmann's head ought to be teeming with last images ...
                                                        (757.33)

       Well that's all reet. He isn't fucking her eyes, is he? He'd rather
    not have to look at her face anyhow, all he wants is the brown skin, the
    shut mouth, the sweet and nigger submissiveness ...
                                                        (606.18)

I think the narration of these two scenes is very different, in terms of
tone, tenor, modality, point of view. The appropriation of Marvy's
idiosyncratic speech idiom within the narration is certainly striking here.

> It might be convincing to argue that we see a very
> subtle move of a third-person narrator, in both of these scenes,
> moving in and out of Blicero's and Marvy's respective POVs, but it
> seems obvious to me that at least part of the time during these
> scenes we get their POV.

This is one of Pynchon's general stylistic manoeuvres, and I agree that it
is applicable to the narration of both sections. However, the context,
purpose, and semantic content of each passage is vastly different imo.

I think it is easy to trace the way that the narration moves from Marvy's
perspective, to external narration, then into Manuela's perspective at 606.
And I'd agree that the parenthesis at 757 addresses Weissmann's suppressed
thoughts during a prior experience with Gottfried to rhetorical effect.

> No matter where the narratological analysis finally rests, however,
> I argue that we do learn the reach of Blicero's depravity when we see
> that this scene of his catamite going up in flames will serve his
> "purposes of self-arousal" -- that pronoun, "anyone" would appear to
> apply to those witnessing this scene, a group that certainly includes
> Blicero.  But, if you want to offer a different interpretation,
> that's fine, too -- go for it.

I think if Pynchon meant Blicero alone he would have said Blicero, or he,
rather than "anyone". And, in fact, it's a pronoun which reaches outside the
immediate narrative context imo.

> So, the narrator that can tell you what a character is *not* thinking
> is exterior, but the narrator that can tell you what a character *is*
> thinking is interior?

The point would be rather that Blicero is not thinking anything, because he
has fallen "into a trance", as the narrative reports at 758.18.

> That doesn't seem clear at all and instead
> seems quite illogical -- surely in both cases the narrator  adopts
> the character's POV in order to report on what's happening (or not)
> inside the character's mind.

At least you seem to have accepted that relating what *is* in a character's
thoughts (i.e. Marvy's) is different to relating what *isn't* (i.e.
Weissmann's). Which seems like a pretty straightforward point.

> "True" and "false" would seem strange categories to apply to literary
> interpretations --

You said that "the scene is narrated from Blicero's point of view, start to
finish ... " This *isn't* true. It's entirely inaccurate.

> another of rj's bogus dichotomies that appear to
> serve no purpose other than to spark flames and fan them.  An
> interpretation may be more or less convincing, more or less faithful
> to the text in question, but "true" or "false" I don't think so.

You weren't offering an interpretation; you made an assertion. And, it was
and is a false assertion.

> In
> the final analysis an interpretation is no more than an opinion, and
> as my old daddy used to say, "An opinion is like an asshole.
> Everybody has one."
>
> rj: "The scene is very deliberately written from an exterior perspective"
>
> In addition to the ability to determine which literary interpretation
> is "true" and which is "false" you've got the crystal ball that lets
> you read Pynchon's mind, too?  Give me a break.  Offer your
> interpretations and we can discuss them, but please leave this sort
> of name-calling ("I'm right and you're wrong, nyah nyah  nyah  nyah
> nyah  nyah")  to the kids on the playground.

I'm not sure how my contention that "The scene is very deliberately written
from an exterior perspective" amounts to "name-calling". So I think we might
just leave it there, Doug. Thank you for your responses.

best