SLSL: Flange and Cindy

[tess marek]

--- The Great Quail <quail at libyrinth.com> wrote:
> Jbor writes,
> 
> > I think the implication is that it's Flange who
> manipulates the situation so
> > that Cindy will throw him out. He thus doesn't
> have to take responsibility
> > for going AWOL from the marriage, his job etc,
> which is what he does
> > actually want to do.
> 
> I agree with this wholeheartedly. Though Cindy isn't
> exactly the warmest gal
> on the planet, and she's surely harsh on my good
> buddy Flange, I see Flange
> as a passive-aggressive figure, a melancholy
> romantic who is just beginning
> to sour, to lose himself, to drift. While not quite
> a "Peter Pan," he is
> definitely stalled in a state of adolescence, his
> internal views on marriage
> and parenthood as murky and undefined as the ocean
> he so dearly loves.

Rip Van Winkle. He thinks he'll just go out and sleep
in the Police Booth again, but the booth with the
Mondrians won't do. She won't have anymore of this
surrogate rationalsim. So, he rejects her mommy's
advise to take a clean shirt and shaving gear (in
other words, go get another place to live but keep
going to work) and decides to grow a beard like Rip.
Ripping! Poor Cindy. It ain't her fault. P simply
fails her. Irving puts just enough into Dame Winkle to
avoid P's mistakes here. Of course, Irving's Winkles
are not childless. RVW is pre-Freudian and
pre-Wasteland.  

But, it's the American tale that P raids to write his
Low-Lands. (Say, Dave Monroe, I could not get at that
web page you posted--Low-Lands as a model or some
such...) 

At the end of RVW, Rip goes Home. What about Flange?
Where does he go? F is a post  WWII (Korean Conflict)
protagonist ruturned to the post-modern cold war
world. Now what? Rip's return has puzzled critics. He
returns to the modern world.  Is he embraced? Rip is
American myth, fantasy, the fecundity and fertility of
the pre revolutionary era. Does America find a place
for Rip after the revolution? What about Flange? He
goes to the dump. Who is living there? It's Pynchon.
Yeah, it WASTE, garbage men and porkpie-hats Goodbye! 

And Rip is a story teller, a spinner of yarns. Just as
Flange can be read as P's anxiety about telling tales
of the sea, so too, Rip represents Irving's anxiety
about telling tales for a living. Rip can't quite tell
his tale. Why not? And we have Knickerbocker. Where is
P's Knickerbocker? In V. we get his Stencil. Up to
that point (including CL49) Pynchon is a Slow Learner
that can not tell a "fast fish" (Melville)   tale
about America. 


Yesterday was Three Kings Day. 
I got a seal mask and another torn manisus. I'm so
frustrated I'm ready to take Geronimo off the 59th. 
oh well, leaky heart, broken brain, prostethic
legs...a dying animal will be an Ironman yet. 

Tess







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