VLVL Takeshi

[jbor]

>>> The joke:  "Just keep an eye on his feet, you'll be fine." VL page 149
>> 
>> I read this in a martial arts context, as DL's instruction to Prairie to
>> watch out for his karate kicks or something.
> 
> Takeshi has Prairie by the hand. He leers genially. Calls her toots.  DL
> is coaching  her, but I don't think it's martial arts, more like sexual
> DANCE strategy. 

Possible too, though DL's apologetic look (149.23) is directed towards
Takeshi. But either way it's a thoroughly different context to the comment
about the way he "glided" across the airport lobby, "a centimeter or two off
the actual floor surface" on p. 160.

>> The line in the airport scene isn't DL talking, it's a detached narrator
>> joking about how "high" Takeshi was (160.13-14).
> 
> I'm not sure what a detached narrator is in this chapter. The
> interruptions include comments that suggest that the characters are
> narrating. Of course what appears to be DL narration seems to be
> detached from her. In an y event, I'm not sure why you are making note
> of this fact here.

The earlier comment about Takeshi's feet is actually direct speech, so it is
DL narrating directly. As already discussed, Pynchon's characteristic
narrative strategy is to filter the (supposedly detached) narrative through
different characters' povs. But in this section, while it's explicitly
framed as Takeshi telling the story, there's quite a bit of material in his
account which is introduced by a detached, third person narrator who
editorialises on the story Takeshi is telling. In many ways it's like a
flashback rather than a nested narrative, and the jokey reference to Takeshi
being "high" and gliding across the airport lounge can be attributed to this
editorialising narrator rather than to Takeshi.

>> I suppose one could just pretend that those parts of Pynchon's texts he or
>> she doesn't like or doesn't understand or doesn't agree with derive from
>> some drugged-out narrator and dismiss their significance that way, but that
>> seems like a cop-out to me.
> 
> Well, we shouldn't dismiss these or any sections, but we shouldn't
> expect that our narrators must be sober.

I'm not sure why you would make this point. Even if one reads Takeshi's
experiences as surreal and hallucinatory and drug-induced then there's still
the question of why Pynchon, the author, has given him these particular
hallucinations rather than others. It's interesting to see how the idea of a
computer game that combines sexual climax with nuclear death (p. 160, a
Pynchonian theme if ever there was one) makes a reader so uncomfortable that
he tries to negate it and excise it from the novel. This sort of thing seems
to happen a lot with Pynchon's texts, as we've seen, and I'd say that
provoking the reader, as well as intruding on his or her space with those
direct rhetorical questions, blatant indeterminacies, the recursive extremes
of vaudeville and bombast, loony tunes and poetry, and the various forms of
second-person address McHale details, is very much part and parcel of
Pynchon's literary mode and purpose.

best

 
> The characters in this novel often treat others as if they are neophytes
> inexperienced in the life lessons that they, as experienced and jaded
> mentors,  have already learned.
> They see other character characters  as younger, inexperienced, doubles,
> students ...  who have yet to see the light/dark.
> 
> DANCE  
> 
> 
> 
> i.e., 
> 
> when Frenesi meets Hector she will try to get him to see that his ideas
> about revolution and film are naive and absurd. Frenesi and Hector will
> end up dancing. Their reminds us of Katje Borgesius dancing with Pirate
> in GR, partnerships, doubles, betrayal, preterition,
> innocence/experience dance. DL dances (VL.122) with her mentor and with
> Ralph (139). 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> The line in the airport scene isn't DL talking, it's a detached narrator
>> joking about how "high" Takeshi was (160.13-14).
> 
> I'm not sure what a detached narrator is in this chapter. The
> interruptions include comments that suggest that the characters are
> narrating. Of course what appears to be DL narration seems to be
> detached from her. In an y event, I'm not sure why you are making note
> of this fact here.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>>> Prairie is swift, but she's so hungry for the story that she's willing
>>> to swallow some  big fish on the line.
>> 
>> Don't know about that. Her interruptions show her as sceptical (eg. 141,
>> 149, 151) just like she was earlier with Zoyd and at Ralph's.
> 
> OH YES! She is very skeptical (swift kid). No one is gonna pull her leg
> and get away with it. But she is willing to say, OK you guys I'm not
> buying that part but I'm not saying I'm not interested in buying a lot
> here. 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>>> How about YOU? Hungry? Here, have
>>> some jellied bologna. Some rubber scampi?
>> 
>> Or a smiling baby Jesus.
> 
> The smiling baby might be a black doll, stiff, rubber, cold, have white
> parents with blond hair and blue eyes,  who under close inspection are
> 3rd graders in christmas play costume and nikes... suddenly it comes
> alive and says, "I be man now," rolls over in his bed of straw and blast
> the stable with a fart knocking down the donkey exposing the altar boy
> and priest.  
> 
> 
>> 
>> I suppose one could just pretend that those parts of Pynchon's texts he or
>> she doesn't like or doesn't understand or doesn't agree with derive from
>> some drugged-out narrator and dismiss their significance that way, but that
>> seems like a cop-out to me.
> 
> Well, we shouldn't dismiss these or any sections, but we shouldn't
> expect that our narrators must be sober.