175s

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> ----------
> >From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> >
> 
> > Turn back to page 289 and the narrator, not sure if it the
> > same one, but it seems to be,  says,
> >
> > "Lotta those *fags* (P's italics) still around, with baskets
> > and 175 badges out on display, staring moistly from
> > doorways. "
> 
> The narration is pretty obviously being filtered through Slothrop at this
> point Terrance. He's the one seeing what's being being described, the one
> who who uses that word "fags" in such a tone. Don't forget about Slothrop's
> latent homophobia as revealed back in St Veronica's. I don't think he ever
> comes to grips with that aspect of his white *American* preconditioning,
> even though he does overcome his prejudice against black men after having
> mat up with Marvy and then Enzian.

Agreed, right on. However, there is something here I want to
suggest: we can, I believe, identify what Booth calls the
"applied author" here. The word "fags" is Slothrop's. P's
italics puts an emphasis here. A deliberate emphasis and it
carries, as you note, Slothrop's White American latent
homophobia. Now, from this single example we cannot
determine that the "applied author's" attitude toward
homosexuals is not that of the character Slothrop, but from
several examples, and of course we will need to find our way
through a labyrinth of ironic doubles, we can. 

Thanks for your post too Otto and David Morris. 

I agree, mostly,  with what you are saying but I think it is
much more complicated than Rob's Badass reading allows.
Grated we have not gotten into it much, so Rob's reading may
be quite complicated, I'm sure it is in fact so, but this
chapter focuses, for the most part, on Thanatz. So, just as
Rob identified the narrative filter in the first mention of
the 175s, we will have to do so in this chapter and we will
need to untwist some of the ironies. 

> 
> >
> > on page 665 the 175s are out of Dora.
> 
> As they were back on p. 289.

That's right. 

> 
> > What I'm asking is, why  are  the 175s, out of Dora, their
> > "home," "homesick?"
> 
> Yes, it's a terrible *irony*, isn't it? The only place they ever felt safe
> and accepted for who they are was in the camp at Dora.

Yes, the irony here, at first, obviously  goes to this
issue. No doubt, but it still doesn't quite make sense to me
and even though I agree, agree for the most part,  with 
David's link, Otto comments, your comment on the terrible
irony here, there is more irony here than this explanation
allows. Well, that's Pynchon.  Isn't it? 

The term Badass is not in this chapter and since we don't
agree on what a Pynchon Badass is and since I strongly
disagree with the idea that Blicero fits into TRP's Luddite
definition, perhaps it is better if we not use this term.
But it's up to you. 

> 
> But, what's your explanation?
> 
> For me, the fact that their guards at Dora were in absolute awe and fear of
> Blicero suggests why the 175s now revere him:
> 
>     ... What the 175s heard from their real SS guards there was enough to
>     elevate Weissman on the spot -- they, his own brother-elite, *didn't
>     know* what this man was up to. When prisoners came in earshot the guards
>     stopped whispering. But their fear kept echoing: fear not of Weissmann
>     personally, but of the time itself, a time so desperate that *he* could
>     now move through the Mittelwerke as if he owned it, a time which was
>     granting him a power different from that of Auschwitz or Buchenwald, a
>     power they couldn't have borne themselves. . . . (666.9 up)
> 
> The "time so desperate" is the inevitable defeat, and Weissmann's "power" at
> this time is not just the power over human life and death (i.e. "Auschwitz &
> Buchenwald"), certainly not just (not even) the authority of SS within the
> Third Reich, but something far greater. It's *Badass* power.
> 
> best

Interesting read, but of course we disagree. 

The 175s make up a hypothetical SS chain of command. They
are set free from Dora, although they are not at liberty to
be who they are outside of Dora in Germany in the Occupied
Germany here.  

But,  they are out of Dora and have an all male, all
homosexual community and still the narrator says that they
are "homesick" for Dora, Dora was home. They are still under
the 175 paragraph and as we learn later in the chapter,
there is a surrounding army or occupation police force. So,
they have an environment outside Dora, there are no SS, they
are an all male homosexual community and yet still they are
homesick for Dora. 
Am I misreading this?  


So, it seems that the terrible irony has been undermined
here a bit or at least, after being fully present is
slipping away.  They set up a hypothetical SS chain. Why
would they do this? Now, they are no longer restricted to
the jailers that Destiny allotted, but they set up a
hypothetical SS chain of command just like the one that they
experienced in Dora. 

One of my questions, a very important one, and I'm only
asking that you keep it in mind for the moment was, why does
the narrator say that ordinarily this community would be
paradise to Thanatz (also we should remember that Thanatz
like Blicero is name that has Death in it) or his "notion of
paradise except that none of the men can bear to be at of
Dora..."?

They have also managed to come up with some "really mean ass
imaginary Nazi playmates." 
And they have chosen an eternal hierarchy too, this
hierarchy has Blicero at the top and it it mimics the
jailer's of Destiny hierarchy and it mimics the inmate
hierarchy as well. At the bottom of the inmate hierarchy is
the Laufer, but the Laufer is also the most sacred. I think
here they have recreated the order on some "religious"
level. The last shall be first kind of thing. The Laufer,
inside Dora would have been the runner or messenger. Now, in
their community he is the messenger still, at the bottom,
but he is also the "most sacred here." Laufer, the narrator
says,  is the German word for a chess Bishop and he also
wears a red vestment, the red vestment of a Catholic Bishop,
and the messages he carries are "holy strategies" and
"memoranda of conscience."
When he approaches you, your bowed head taken by the nape
brushes the sidebands of a "Great Moment." He carries the
messages out to the ruinous interface between the visible
Lager and the invisible SS. 

At the top of the complex is Blicero. 

TBC