GR 'Streets'

[jbor]

on 18/4/03 1:07 AM, David Morris at fqmorris at yahoo.com wrote:

> Of course it's just an interpretation, but it's one that requires you to
> supply
> an emotion not stated in the text, which is fine, but your basis for it is
> thin
> IMHO.  I think it is more valuable to focus on what's stated and not stated
> which paints a picture more eloquent (IMHO) than the one which supplies
> Slothrop with the uderstanding of what he's looking at, and the emotions you
> give him:

I disagree, but that's OK.

> 1.  It is never stated that Slothrop understands what the photo is.  In fact
> there is a long list of associations made, listed by a narrator but probably
> describing Slothrop's mind, and not one of them says "atomic bomb."

It is never stated that Slothrop doesn't understand what the photo is.
 
> 2.  The headline doesn't say "atomic bomb.

No. It just said "Bomb". My mistake. Or are you saying that Slothrop doesn't
realise that it's a bomb? It's a front page headline and photo. There's a
war on. Slothrop learnt German he was so obsessed with bombs, I'd be
surprised if he didn't catch on real quick. But I guess it's a possibility.
 
> 3.  WE understand, without it ever being spelled out, what the headline says
> and what the picture is of, but Slothrop sees every thing in the world other
> than what it is.

No, he only makes connections to a "genital onset", which is an inversion
(if not a perversion) of the "rainbow cock" he sees on p. 626, to the
"hey-lookit-me smugness" of the Cross, and to "a Tree."

> 4.  Slothrop stares at the picture a long time, but forgets that he does.  And
> no emotion is attributed to him.  The only emotions implied are those that the
> associated images can generate, for us, and maybe for him.

Yes.

> They are a
> wonderful array of images, and I don't see despair in any of them.  Th amazing
> thing for me is that they are primarily about LIFE.
> So for all of the above it seems to me that Slothrops mind is a creative sieve
> generating alot, but not able to hold onto anything, which is why he can't
> remember staring at the photo for so long.  And he's about to go get naked.

He already did this. On pp. 622-6.

Good grief. It seems that the American atrocity in bombing Hiroshima, which
is the primary semantic and historical referent in this section of the
novel, is as big a taboo as noting that the text doesn't endorse a Christian
worldview. Porter says it's condemning US involvement in Vietnam and that
dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima was a part of the 20th C.'s "great moral
crusade". Mackin says Slothrop and all US servicemen were relieved that the
US dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and that this "historical actuality"
overrides anything the novel might have to say about it. McMullen's trump
card is "imagery", where it seems that any mention of a tree or wood is
simultaneously a reference to the Gardens of Eden, Gethsemane *and* Christ's
Crucifixion. And you're saying Slothrop identifies the headline and mushroom
cloud with images of "LIFE". And it's *my* interpretation which is "thin",
"erroneous", "insupportable", "imaginatively illiterate" and offensive to
the memory of members of McMullen's family! Please, fellas. Surely you can
come up with something better than that!

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Photos/Photo7.shtml

best