V.V. (12) Sieges, Badasses

[jbor]

I'm reminded also of the reference to some Badass (like Bodine, for example)
"sneaking a whoopee cushion under the descending arses of the grail-seekers
at the Siege Perilous" (quoting from memory) at one point in _GR_ as well.

Insofar as Kurt with his sferics code is just one such of these
"grail-seekers", or a prototype thereof, I'm wondering whether Weissman's
ultimate announcement that he has decoded the sferics message, and the
actual message he presents to Kurt, mightn't be read as just such a "whoopee
cushion" as well. (This is probably also a question which can wait for the
next section of the discussion.) Same sort of thing possibly goes for
Stencil's condfoundment in the long run as well.

I can see the Badass-figure as Pynchon constitutes him as someone who puts a
spanner in the, if not Their, works; someone who is created by, or brought
up in, "the System", but who ultimately turns on that "System". But I agree
that Badass-ness is not easy to pin down. As Scott has been saying, it
certainly isn't the simple right or wrong, good or evil, white hat/black hat
stuff of your average cowboy flick, that's for sure.

And, further, thinking along the grail & Siege lines, in many respects
Germany, certainly in the latter parts of WWII, was a nation under siege, a
nation which had been aspiring to some sort of grail, and perhaps Blicero's
house near the racecourse (like Foppl's villa) does serve as a microcosm of
what sorts of games, denials, self-indulgences, go on during such
siege-times. The "siege-mentality" thing gets a lot of air-time in Pynchon's
texts I believe, and Blicero firing Gottfried off in that 00000 does perhaps
constitute some ultimate (or penultimate) Badass act.


best


> There's a lot of talk about what constitutes a "siege" in this section, too:
>
> Vera to Godolphin (about Foppl's party): "Non-military it may be, but a
> false siege it is not."
>
> Godolphin: "I have done believing in siege as anything more than military
> technic. ... " ("technic"??)
>
> And then, about "Port Arthur" in 1904, he sez: "It was siege in the great
> tradition." (246-7)
>
> Q. Is there something about "siege-mentality" which is going on here, in
> terms of both Rebellions (1904 & the current one, 1922), but also vis à vis
> the Depression in Munich which haunts Kurt's dreams?