Like a taxi throbbing waiting

[Dave Monroe]

Thanks for all of this!  The Tiresias thing just kinda
sorta hit me--really, "soul-transvestitism" and
"metempsychosis" to Ru Paul and Geraldine to
Tiresias--and I just went right to that footnote and
winged it from there.  Just wanted to get SOMETHING
posted, is all.  And there's still Aeschylus and Ovid
(at least) to go ...

http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/seventhebes.html

http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.html

Hawthorne, Mark D. "A 'Hermaphrodite Sort of
   Deity': Sexuality, Gender, and Gender Blending
   in Thomas Pynchon's V."  Studies in the Novel,
   Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring 1997): 74-93.

http://library.northernlight.com/LW19980701030000228.html

Which reminds me, something I went to some trouble to
get and rather less trouble to actually read ...

Barkan, Leonard.  The Gods Made Flesh:
   Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism.
   New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1986.

Not to mention ...

Sobchack, Vivian, ed.  Meta-Morphing:
   Visual Transformation and the Culture
   of Quick Change.  Mpls: U of Minn P, 2000.

But I'm now interested in a rehabilitation of Stencil
of sorts.  Is he in much different a situation than we
are in re: V.?  The putative figure?  The Pynchonian
text? Or in re: history, rathouses thereof. 
"stencilization" as the condition of possibility of
narration, interpretation, historiograhpy, et al.? 
What does it mean to have "Stencilized" "Mondaugen's
Story"?  What did Mondaugen "really" say?  Or not say,
as the case may be?  That Holton essay is mighty
interesting, makes it seem almost an act of necessary
postcolonial revisionism ...


--- kevin at limits.org wrote:

> Back when we were on VV3 (chapter 2, that is), there
> was some discussion
> about whether Stencil, or a third person
> ominiscience, or some combination
> of the two, is the narrator of the party scene. 
> That party scene, after
> Stencil leaves, concludes with a rather funny scene
> of young people
> getting together: Esther's "how long have you been
> in New York?" line.
> 
> What's interesting about this Tiresias/Stencil
> comparison is that, much
> like Tiersias "at the violet hour," Stencil sits on
> the kitchen counter at
> the party and perceives the scene; if you believe
> the "Stencil narrates
> the entire party scene, even after he leaves"
> theory, he also foretells
> the rest, that is the superificial interactions
> between Esther and her new
> friend.
> 
> Also, Tiresias's "violet hour" concludes with the
> woman smoothing her hair
> "with automatic hand" and putting a record on the
> gramaphone; this blends
> into the next stanza, which describes music coming
> out of doors in public
> bars of London (_WL_ l. 255-263).  The WSC's party
> in chapter 2, by
> comparison, is followed by the somewhat eerie scene
> at the V-Note.
> 
> As for metempsychosis and "soul transvestism," see
> Ben Johnson's
> _Volpone_, Act I, scene ii, in which Volpone's
> "creatures" perform a comic
> paegant. In this mini-masque Androgyno, the
> hermaphrodite, plays a soul
> who originated from Pythagoras, and he recounts his
> transmigrative
> journeys. I cannot remember the name of the author,
> but the essay
> "Johnson's Metempsychosis" in the Norton edition of
> Johnson's plays has a
> thorough analysis.
> 
> Kevin Troy


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