VV (16) Rachel and Fina Some spoilers

Swing Hammerswing hammerswingswing at hotmail.com
Sat May 26 07:21:14 CDT 2001


Paola is a puzzling figure.

She is disguised here as Ruby (not exacly the rock of G-Malta), a Jewel, as 
inanimate, if not more so, than McClintic's white Ivory Sax.  But she not in 
disguise as the more historical characters in the Stencil Stories are 
disguised, or as the nose doctor is, as   Z the "union" leader is, as Roony 
is, as the "artists" are, as the  tourists. Paola is able to assume a 
different personality not through actually changing her appearance so much 
but by allowing others to form a different view of her through the 
manipulation of her
esoteric and enigmatic and uncertain History/Herstory and background. Her 
age and her nationality are variable because she "could be any age she 
wanted." And "you suspected any nationality, for Paola knew scraps it seemed 
of all tongues." Paola's Maltese heritage allows her this
versatility, she is FREE to shape her identity so that she can be both Paola 
and Ruby.


I'm not sure what you mean by Paola being V Jay Bee, she seems to be
the opposite of V. in many ways.  Winsome, at least, perceives in her a
passivity which makes him think that she, like Pig, is theproduct of a 
"decky-dance. " Passivity, now that's a major theme in this story, this 
book, this Pynchon guy, Is she the product of the decky-dance?

Why do all the men want her? Stencil is searching for V in history, see 
Neumann, Erich. Woman's Mysteries: Ancient and Modern and Ulanove, Ann 
Belford. The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and Christian Theology. Why do 
they fight over, search for her, hunt her, lust
for her? Why does their lust transform them into Pigs? The novel opens with 
a search for Paola, V is already found. So Winsome's thinking that Pig 
Bodine (Winsome, like Pig and Benny is also described as having Pig-like 
characteristics when he obsesses about Paola) is a product of the 
decky-dance is generally correct, but his view of Paola is questionable 
because, as Winsome has also noted, Paola is "an enigma," and as such cannot 
be described accurately.

Also, Winsome is a romantic hero (Love in the Western Movie Street World)  
and like his wife Randy, he lusts for adultery. Pig also covets Pappy's 
wife. Pappy tells stories about the girl to his mates. He Shylarks her into 
the States. Rach thinks the girl is sick. Well, she certainly is
in some trouble. McClintic Sphere's concern for Paola
helps her through a period of conflict and fracturing. A fracturing
that Fausto feared might parallel his own. Fausto writes to
Paola that he fears she might suffer a "fracturing of
personality such as your father has undergone."

This fracturing of personality is so important to P's
fiction we can't say enough about it. The postmodern lit
critters have done a good job of distinguishing this
fragmentation from  the modernist alienation. Although my
own opinion is that P sails between these critical Scylla
and Charybdis and gets the reader Home, although not without
the loss of most of his men and women. "May you be only one
Paola, one girl: a single given heart, a whole mind at
peace," exactly what Paola wants  "just a little peace." She
leaves Hod, after all, for exactly this reason, and we find
her working in  the sailor's grave, although she's not quite a
Beatrice,  and  after living in a different place under a
different name, after re-establishing her identity, she
returns   home to Hod. Why does Pynchon send her home
to Hod? Paola, I think,  counters V.'s necrophilous
activities through a final re-assertion of loyalty and of
marriage,  of life over death, of life over the inanimate.
V, on the other hand, the street's own time, her habitat a
State of siege, the Catholic Church corrupted, it's
congregation of tourists in love with death beyond good and
evil, moves through stages of increasing inanimateness to
dismemberment and Death bereft of any possibility for
Rebirth. It is Paola, the girl, the young Maltese, who
"lived proper nouns." Persons, places, No things" who is
the complete opposite of the what the Church has become, she is the
opposite of the V.  V. descends to final oblivion. Paola, who
receives her comb, her emblem, is able -to transmute that
symbol of death into one of life through the greatest of
these, charity and love and marriage:


        "Like any other wife."


"I will sit in Norfolk, faithful, and spin. Spin a yarn..."

but, unlike Penelope, Paola waits and spins  only after she
making her own voyage.


Paola's actions  may serve as the sympathetic model against which the 
actions of the characters of her generation can be measured. Paola
finally fulfills her father's wish that she be "one Paola,
one girl: a single given heart, whole mind at peace."

It is Paola's having a sense of "the way it should have
been" between her husband and herself that provides a
standard to live by, a standard deliberately considered and
chosen Freely.

see also  *Love in the Western World* by Denis De Rougemont

"Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence; and
likewise also the wife unto the husband."

It's the 60s after all and the Jesuits are insisting that the wife hath 
power of her own body!

Well how else can she ever be free and have a little peace
after a long voyage home.

In M&D Pynchon turns to Paul again. Thomas is tired.

Paola also seems to embody all sorts of women, some stereotypes, most of 
them thrust upon her by deck-dancing pig men, but that Mockingbird song, her 
parallels to Fina, are positive sterotypes of the African-American female.


"American movies had given them stereotypes all, all but
Paola Maijstral…

She was taken as bride by Pappy Hod when she was quite
young, sixteen she said, but her birth records were
destroyed along with most of the buildings on her island of
Malta. Pappy lied about her age and her nationality and
borrowed 500-700 from Mac the cook to bring her stateside.
She was a bartender there, the Metro Bar, on Strait street.
The Gut. Valletta, Malta,


She wanted out of Malta, every Mediterranean barmaid's
deftness, to marry out, to get out of hell, to go,  perhaps
to America, a land of Peace.  To go some place where "there
was enough food, warm clothes, heat all the time, buildings
all in one piece."

As the piggish and riggish Pappy Hod is describing her to
his deck apes, to amuse them, he seems to almost  wake up to
the fact that the score, the calculated, purchased
relationship, he has been in, may not figure so easily now.
This doesn't prevent him from abusing her, cheating on her
and beating her.

And what is Pig Bodine's interest in the girl? Wants to take
her on his Bike, replace a love object for a love object, to
the West.

To the grave of Sailors, (comic,  parodic, fantastic, and
tragic) where the degeneration of the Virgin Mary towards
the inanimate is the spirit that presides over the
ceremonies and rituals there. The  Profane maternal  power
of the mechanical bride, the machinery that produces
Hollywood legs and WASP noses and stereotypes, is swollen
with buffoonery and the mockery of that holy night,
Christmas Eve, where a hymn celebrating the Virgin, her gift
of Peace, is disconnected like a juke box by the atheist Pig
Bodine and the parodic celebration, the ritual that is "suck
hour", where white foam flows from rubber breasts, causes
Mrs. Buffo, Beatrice(s),  a comic profanation of Dante's
Virgin light and guide to Peace & Paradise, to undertake a crying
jag, an inhuman blubbering, and the carnage sends Paola, the
girl from one of the most bombarded island in history,  down
to the floor where she presses her face against Profane's
leg and pleads for a little peace while Pig Bodine sits in
as voyeur until the shore patrol  shows up, when he says,
"grab the broad", meaning Paola, and takes off, by chance,
in the direction they are heading.


At Teflon's ( Pig's friend who takes soft porno photos)
place Paolo is in shock, her needs manage to bring out the
healing and sympathetic talents of Benny, talents he doesn't
really have but for Paola,  but now  Dewey and Pig lust after the girl,
asking for sloppy seconds, as if they could meet her needs. Profane suggests 
that she is trying to recover from her abuse at the hands of men, that's why 
she's with Benny after all, a fat ameba with pig's eyes, but Pig Bodine 
rejects the explanation. Profane sees in her eyes something we will
learn more about, her refusal to share a bed, but asks him to
be good to her. Teflon and camera send them out in the snow,
where it's not cold but Paola can't stop shivering, and
Benny seems to have used up his transient sympathetic
talent and so he doesn't comfort her. She presses against
him on the ferry, but he is alienated from the living, she
ends up dancing the dirty boogie with Pig and taking comfort
in the company of women, one of the Beatrices and on New
Years, when Benny asks her about the para's song, the para,
who had haunted the week, she says, "Je suis ne. Being
Born."

Paola was born on Malta.


As with all the women in this novel we should ask, What is
her relationship to V? At this point it is hard to say, but
I suspect that she is an important character and that the
dark days of V may be countered or counterbalanced not by
Sphere and stoicism but by a collection of women in the
novel (not that we should discount their unique qualities)
and that this enigmatic female force, Paola,  may function as Nora and a 
collection of women do in GR. Paola seems to possess something very human, 
some human value, being born. Each of us is born, unique, individuals, 
vulnerable.

If we are to understand Sphere, we must, I
think, understand Paolo. She is introspective and critical
and she will develop the ability to analyze her own actions
and then, if only then,  take responsibility for them.
Paola's Maltese heritage and experience during the war help
to mold her attitudes.

Maijstral writes to Paola, that "having been abandoned so
early to a common underground, questions of want or
possession never occurred to you."

There's your anti-capitalism. See Max Weber on Catholic anti-capitalism and 
the forgiveness of sin.

Sailing away with Paul,

The carpenter Swinging


>From: JBFRAME at aol.com
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: VV (16) Rachel and Fina
>Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 01:59:43 EDT
>
>In a message dated 05/25/2001 4:08:15 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
>jbor at bigpond.com writes:
>
>
> > Maybe it's only Roony who has assumed that
> > "Ruby" is a Negress: do we ever get an indication that this is what
> >
>
>I had always just assumed that he knew she was white, but, as V. she can be
>all things to all men....
>
>jbf

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