GR 'Streets'

[jbor]

on 13/4/03 6:41 AM, s~Z at keithsz at concentric.net wrote:

> On the one hand the narrative voice is
> describing the scene in which we find Slothrop, but my God it does go on
> about things in a manner not very well described as neutrality, nor
> impersonality.

Yes, there is definitely a narrative voice, or narrator, in the chaplains
paragraph. This is the voice which emphasises to the reader that "[i]t
really happened", and it is the source of the tone of the passage (certainly
not neutral). It's actually easier to talk about the dynamics of the text
when there's something as clear-cut as this being used by the author as
narrative agency.

This narrative voice is conscious of itself narrating, and it is continuous
throughout the 'Streets' section, although the temporal perspective does
jump around. The narrative voice is separate from Slothrop ("he"), but it is
privy to Slothrop's psyche: "He doesn't remember sitting on the curb for so
long staring at the picture. But he did." And it does align itself with
Slothrop's point of view, and, I'm assuming, his thoughts, attitudes and
opinions.

(Note re. the Sartre straw man: I originally noted that the term
"nothingness" seemed anomalous in that list of five things the chaplains
discuss with the soldiers. I couldn't work out why the chaplains would
broach it as a topic, and I couldn't see how it fits into the sequence, or
what aspect of Christian teaching it denoted. While the other four terms are
immediately accessible as deriving from basic, general, non-denominational
and multi-purpose Christian theology, the immediate connotation the middle
term had for me was Sartre's _Being and Nothingness_, Sartre's most famous
text, and one which is referred to by name by Pynchon in 'The Small Rain'.
Paul and Keith both provided precedents for the use of the term in Christian
teaching, and I happily stand corrected on that point, but it still does
stick out for me in the list, even if only for the fact that the other four
are so commonly-known and definitive and "nothingness" remains somewhat
ambiguous by comparison. I don't know whether Pynchon simply forgot the
term's connection with Sartre and existentialism, but that to me seems
unlikely.)

best