SLSL "The Small Rain" - excerpts of an essay

[pynchonoid]

(These excerpts and pointer to the complete article
are offered as a discussion resource only with no
endorsement of the author's views.-Doug)


http://www.findarticles.com/m2342/3_34/70396388/p1/article.jhtml

Homoerotic Bonding as Escape from Heterosexual
Responsibility in Pynchon's Slow Learner.
Mark D. Hawthorne

[...] Although "The Secret Integration," the last
published of the stories, is the only one in which
Pynchon directly treats childhood, the introduction to
Slow Learner locates the stories in a space where the
adage "boys will be boys" carries unusual, because
pregenital, connotations of homosocial bonding. This
space is a boy's world shaped not only by Playboy
(10), boys' adventure tales (11), and spy fiction and
novels of intrigue (18) but also by a generous
sprinkling of classics. It is a space where males talk
much about women but keep them at arm's length so that
they can indulge in their imaginations. Pynchon
identifies this space as the military in "The Small
Rain" and "Low-lands." In neither story does he
clearly mark this space as fitting onto an axis of
homosexual-heterosexual, but in both he intersects
this continuum of male desire with female intrusions
that either deflate or negate it.
As ironic in its contents as in its title, "The Small
Rain," a story centered on the Signal Corp's cleaning
up after a hurricane has devastated a bayou town, is
remarkable for what it does not say. In his
introduction, Pynchon is especially harsh in his
discussion of this story, perhaps because it is the
first in the collection and marks the first step in
his apprenticeship. When we compare it to "The Secret
Integration," we cannot fail to agree that the story,
in Pynchon's words, is marred by "quaintness and
puerility" (6); still, it develops a male space safe
from responsibility and, most important, from women.
In the story, except for his leaving the base for a
weekend in New Orleans or shirking from suggestions
that he better his status, "Lardass" Levine never
clarifies what he finds desirable either in the Army
or specifically in his billet at Fort Roach. That is,
Pynchon categorizes the desired space by identifying
its opposites--freedom for adult sexuality on his
leave and freedom from responsibility in his refusal
to better himself. In the "safe" world of the
barracks, a space similar to the hotel room's "closet"
of "The Secret Integration," Levine loses himself in
The Swamp Wench, a pornographic novel, and avoids
responsibility (arriving at the meeting after the
lieutenant has briefed the others). Like Tim and
Grover's sharing of their imaginary friend, the
vicarious sharing of pornography and the "pairing" of
the men (a pairing parodied by their acting as members
of a vaudeville team) bond the men, channel homoerotic
desire toward the "acceptable," and thus vitiate the
homosexual implications of living in the all male
barracks.

But when the men report to bivouac at McNeese State
College, they find themselves plunged into the
responsibilities they had tried to escape. In the form
of a severe hurricane, Nature has caused the deaths of
the 250 citizens of Creole; these deaths mark the
intersection between the axes of fantasy-experience
and irresponsibility-responsibility, on the one hand,
and homosocial (maybe even homosexual though not
genital) bonding and heterosexual activity, on the
other. By entering the swamp for ten-hours to collect
corpses, Levine takes on responsibility and later he
goes with "little Buttercup," a real life "swamp
wench," to a secluded shack where they have sex. But
neither action is completely free of the homosocial
desire of the barracks. First, because Levine does not
ask permission to leave his post. he thus needs his
friends to cover for him. Second, when he has sex with
little Buttercup, "he assumed toward her that same
nonchalant compassion which he felt for the heroines
of sex novels, or the burned out but impotent guy
rancher in a western." Levine is thus strangely
divorced from the erotic. With Buttercup, for
instance, "He let her undress apart from him; until,
standing there in nothing but T-shirt and baseball
cap, puffing placidly on the stogie he heard her from
the mattress, whimpering." Even during the sex act, he
is detached, "puffing occasionally at the cigar
throughout the performance, the ball cap tilted
carelessly" (50). Avoiding the anguish of Tennessee
Williams's sexually haunted characters, Pynchon's
inhabit the sort of space that Sarotte identified as
"homoerotic without being homosexual" (116). In other
words, except for genital activity, homosexual and
heterosexual desires become so mixed that there is
little to separate them. After leaving "little
Buttercup," Levine, before falling asleep,
half-heartedly agrees with the PFC that "it'll almost
be a relief to get back" (51). The return to the
barracks ensures that he will be able to escape the
responsibility that heterosexual role-modeling forces
onto him. [...] 



=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com