SLSL: "Low-lands," part 3b: Discussion & Questions, pg 67-77

[The Great Quail]

Again, some half-assed "reading group" discussion questions. I have my own
thoughts on many of these, and I'll certainly chime in later!

(By the way, it's fun co-hosting a session. If I seem too pedantic, I'm
sorry -- I've been out of the classroom too long! ;)

9. Again, referring to Pynchon¹s own claims that "Low-lands" is infected by
sexism, racism, and fascism:

A) Does anyone see any overt racist elements in his characterization of
Bolingbroke? The gypsies? Is this what he even meant?

B) What about fascism? Does anyone but Pynchon see any elements of this in
"Low-lands?"

10. Bolingbroke's shack is in the middle of a labyrinth within a spiral,
some powerful symbolism. Any comments?

11. Flange cannot bring himself to tell sea stories:

"But the real reason he knew and could not say was that if you are Dennis
Flange and if the sea's tides are the same that not only wash
along your veins but also billow through your fantasies then it is all right
to listen to but not to tell stories about that sea, because you
and the truth of a true lie were thrown sometime way back into a curious
contiguity and as long as you are passive you can remain aware of the
truth's extent but the minute you become active you are somehow, if not
violating a convention outright, at least screwing up the perspective of
things, much as anyone observing subatomic particles changes the works, data
and odds, by the act of observing.  So he had told the other instead, at
random.  Or apparently so."

Later, he remarks:

"It suited some half-felt sense of fitness; it was right that there should
be gypsies living in the dump, just as he had been able to believe in the
rightness of Bolingbroke's sea, its ability to encompass and be the
sustaining plasma or medium for horse-drawn-taxies and Porcaccios. Not to
mention that young, rogue male Flange, from whom he occasionally felt the
Flange of today had suffered a sea change into something not so rare or
strange."

We see here that the sea represents something beyond female and/or messianic
symbolism, and that it is a sustaining medium for "sea stories," or tall
tales of feckless exploits rich with "magical realism," to put it kindly.
Interestingly, Flange's very youth seems to be grouped within this category
of "true lies." Any comment on these ideas, which seem to me to be quite
pivotal in understanding the story...? And what about that provocative
phrase, "the truth of a true lie?"

12. Flange's tale involves the theft of a dead woman and the ignominious use
to which she is put. Does this show anything about his relationship to women
-- Cindy, his mother, the sea, etc. -- or is it just a rather lurid tale? He
claims it is not a "sea-story" per se; so if it is a substitute, does that
tell us anything as well?

13. On wombs:

A) In many ways, Flange's advance into Nerissa's world mirrors his retreat
from the world he shares with Cindy. His Long Island home is a chthonian
"womb with a view," and Pynchon describes it in unmistakably sexual terms as
a "curious, moss-thatched, almost organic mound," one that "Flange at least
had come to feel attached to the place by an umbilical cord woven of
lichen." Whereas Nerissa's home is in a metallic junkyard filled with
rubber, concrete, and the detritus of domesticity -- "loosely stacked
household appliances." Any comments on this symmetry?

B) Additionally, the police booth, though hung with Cindy's "austere and
logical" Mondrians, is nevertheless snug and "as womblike as can be." Does
this say anything about good ol' marriage-afflicted Flange? And what about
the fact that it is a police booth -- a comment on Cindy, perhaps?

14. Nerissa has a rat named Hyacinth, and Flanges' arrival has been foretold
by a gypsy fortuneteller named Violetta. Does anyone wish to extend Slade's
suggestion that this scene reflects T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland?"

15. On children:

A) Nerissa, a beautiful "midget," resembles a child -- and Hyacinth, her
rat, the child of this child. What possible meanings might be found in these
observations? 

B) A very striking line: "And then: I wonder why Cindy and I never had a
child." Any answers to this?

C) Recall from pg. 62, when Cindy throws him out, and Flange wonders: "Maybe
if they had had kids...." Any more insights on Flange and children from this
context? 

D) Flange's next thought, after (B) above: "And: a child makes it all right.
Let the world shrink to a boccie ball." An obvious reference to his earlier
musings:

"Whenever he was away from Cindy and could think he would picture his life
as a surface in the process of change, much as the floor of the dump was in
transition: from concavity or inclosure to perhaps a flatness like the one
he stood in now.  What he worried about was any eventual convexity, a
shrinking, it might be, of the planet itself to some palpable curvature of
whatever he would be standing on, so that he would be left sticking out like
a projected radius, unsheltered and reeling across the empty lunes of his
tiny sphere..."

What exactly does Flange mean by "a child makes it right?" Is he referring
to having a child, or the fact that Nerissa is like a child? Why is he
suddenly not worried about his world shrinking? What's happening here?

16. The last line:

"For awhile, at least, he thought. She looked up gravely. Whitecaps danced
across her eyes; sea creatures, he knew, would be cruising about in the
submarine green of her heart."

What is Nerissa? What does she mean? How is she related to Flange's
perception of the sea, and his conflicted thoughts on children?

How long will Flange "stay?" Is this real, or will he awake? Has he,
perhaps, gone mad? And if he wakes up the next morning, what's next?

--Quail