VV(11): Fingernails

[Dave Monroe]

Er, I didn't think we were in disagreement here. 
Another violent agreement afoot?  Whatever ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> ----------
> >From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
> >
> 
> > Oh, yeah, all of that, and then some, no doubt. 
> And
> > that's what I was getting at in re: that
> "flickering
> > fine line."  Again, though, deconstruction does
> not
> > elide, much less eliminate (a la, say, that
> Hegelian
> > aufhebung that's come up recently--and thanks for
> all
> > the notes, Kurt-Werner, much enlightenment,
> indeed!),
> > said binaries ...
> 
> No, but it sure does mess them around.
> 
> I think one frame might be that Benny envisages
> things (or at least wants
> to, being one of the have-nots and needing a
> convenient reason for this, or
> at least something to blame it on) in that simple
> binary opposition
> ("material wealth" vs "getting laid", or "inanimate
> money" vs "animate
> warmth"), but then the ironies or inaccuracies start
> to creep in on even his
> construction ("dead fingernails" vs "living
> shoulderblades"), and then
> finally he goes back to that fatalistic acceptance
> of his own status in the
> world and his prior determination to let chance or
> Fortuna lead him where it
> will: "inanimate schmuck, inanimate paper, pure
> chance." (215.13)
> 
> In this respect I see Benny as an earlier version of
> Pynchon himself
> perhaps, one of those guys that "I can't very well
> just 86 ... from my life"
> but to whom, even so, he might still feel
> uncomfortable "about lending ...
> money, or for that matter even stepping down the
> street to have a beer and
> talk over old times", as he puts it on the very
> first page of that
> extraordinarily-candid _Slow Learner 'Intro'. I
> think that the model of
> Fausto's 'Confessions' (Ch. 11), the various
> versions of self that are
> recalled therein, are very applicable elsewhere in
> this text as well.
> 
> Elision and elimination are your terms, loaded terms
> at that. Deconstruction
> simply describes the way that language structures
> human conceptions of
> "reality". The binary opposition of animate and
> inanimate, with the former
> unequivocally privileged over the latter, is an
> artificial one, constructed
> in and by language, as Pynchon's exemplifications
> increasingly demonstrate.
> If such demonstrations serve to undermine or subvert
> either the language or
> the concepts, and thereby the systems and structures
> of power and control to
> which this language and these concepts are put in
> society, then all the
> better imo.
> 
> best
> 


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