V.V. (12) "But finally she released Weissmann ... "

[jbor]

And, saving the best for last ...

I agree with what you say, but as well as serving to titillate Kurt (the
"voyeur") I think that it is *meant* to unsettle him, and the confusion of
just who is S and who is M in the tableau has perhaps been orchestrated to
achieve just this effect as well. Further, I couldn't say for sure whether,
ultimately, Vera, or Weissmann, or even Kurt (let alone Foppl, or Stencil,
or Eigenvalue), are completely "in control" of the events represented in
this chapter. Which also means that as a reader my "control" over
interpretation and significance of what is narrated is also diminished, or
undermined.

Phil Wise has been making some interesting observations about reading as a
fascist activity, too, and I suspect that it's something which is in play in
Pynchon's subversions of single or unitary "readings" within his texts.
Here, the roles of "writer" and "reader" are so muddied by the nesting of
narrative within narrative within narrative etc that it's impossible,
really, to say very much about themes or symbolism or even plot with
anything approaching certainty, and this mirrored scene is, or could be, an
embodiment of this process. I'm less sure that this absence of certainty (or
clarity, or representation) equates to Death than that it constitutes a
resistance to author-ity.

I will certainly be able to check out that _Meanjin_ article for you later
this week, if you can't access it yourself.

best


----------
>From: "Judy" <blarney at total.net>
>

> Here's my take on this passage. I think Vera is an active participant in
> whatever it is that's happening between her and Weissmann. She is "striking
> his chest" and not fighting him off. And then, even though it is Weissmann
> who is holding her by the hair and mouthing obscenities at her, she is the
> one who is in control. By needing to hold her by the hair or "bind" her, he
> is acknowledging her power. So then it is her who "releases him."  Also,
> Mondaugen has already acknowledged her power over him so it wouldn't be a
> leap to say that he sees her in the position of power.
>
> While considering your question, I went through Thomas Moore's "Dark Eros:
> The Imagination of Sadism" and came across something that made me think of
> the whole setting of Mondaugen's story:
>
> "An essay on Sade by Catherine Duncan and Francois Peraldi, "Discourse of
> the Erotic - The Erotic in Discourse," [Meanjin Quarterly #33: 63] focuses
> on Sade's text and on the "libertinage of reading." The reader participates,
> these authors say, in the scenarios Sade depicts in relation to the text.
> "It's not the tight-fitting trousers, nor the body they outline that are
> erotic, but the deliberate slit made in the material which eroticizes by
> offering to the view (the reader) what is still half-hidden." Peraldi goes
> on to describe the reading of Sade highlighting what we should understand as
> the anima of the text.[:]
>
> At the centre of the erotic scene and space assigned to the orgy...there are
> secret rooms, pits, abysses, catacombs, a hole, a yawning gap, where the
> ultimate rites of the erotic action are performed. From those who descend
> there, few but the libertine return. In those pits is played out the
> Unnameable, for this hole metaphorizes a hole in the text. Brought to the
> edge of the precipice, the text can say nothing more than that there is
> nothing more to say. And there, where there is nothing more to say, in the
> bottomless pit where the ultimate act takes place is Death. It's around this
> empty centre, this pit, this silence of the text that all erotic writing
> turns...Isn't what we call eroticism this vertiginous desire to be swallowed
> up, the pull-back and the attraction toward the pit, toward Death, toward
> the silence of writing?"
>
> I don't have access to the whole essay, but wouldn't mind seeing it to
> follow up on the connection I'm making.
>
>

>