VLVL concluding Chapter 7

[Michael Joseph]

> on 20/10/03 1:29 PM, Michael Joseph at mjoseph at rci.rutgers.edu wrote:
>
> >>>> It's pretty straightforward that Prairie is asking for information and help
> >>>> in finding (physically and metaphorically) Frenesi. And it's immediately
> >>>> followed by DL realising she's "in a pickle", acknowledging Takeshi's
> >>>> fallibility,
> >>>
> >>> The text suggests that DL feels that she is in a pickle, not because of
> >>> Takeshi's "fallibility" (your intervention), but because of his
> >>> prowess--"she was still finding out what he could do" (100). Pynchon is so
> >>> obviously implying Takeshi might be capable of doing anything. Why else
> >>> rig up his business card as an "amulet"--and why else repeat the term
> >>> "amulet"? Surely there are better ways to imply "fallibility"?
> >>
> >> Years with Takeshi, and she was still finding out what he
> >> could do. And couldn't.
> >
> > Nice try, but clearly a reference to their sexual abstinence, and his
> > ability to exert self control.
>
> Sure it is, Mike.
>
Knew you'd protest, perhaps on behalf of first-time readers for whom the
abstinence issue hadn't been introduced, and who therefore wouldn't be
able to react to this nuance. But, fallibility? For fallibility to become
an issue, one has either to have started from the point of considering a
character infallibile, and we've already seen Takeshi rely upon Zoyd to
conceal him from the mysterious sky patrol (never mind the operative
assumptions of adult fiction), or to have a text focalized from a naive
perspective for whom infallibility is an option, and, surely, DL cannot
strike any reader as naive.


Michael