MMV: Windigo

[jbor]

Another problem with King's article is that he attempts to lodge the entire
blame for the blood-bath with Siegel. To make his case he says that Siegel
whispering the word "Windigo" to irving Loon is a "provocation" and that he
is the one who "instigates" the attack, where in fact Siegel is really only
testing whether Loon is in the grip of "the Windigo". The events that unfold
aren't deliberately provoked by Siegel at all. Debby Considine's role (her
habit of "picking up male specimens and bringing them back with her") and
the fact that David Lupescu has BAR rifles on his wall as decorative
knick-knacks with ammunition handy are conveniently overlooked by King.

Siegel's withdrawal from the party without warning the others or trying to
prevent the massacre in some way is, or is meant to be, a shocking climax,
and both the religious rationalisation he concocts and his shrug of
indifference are appalling. However, the double entendre on the word
"beaver" ("Succulent, juicy, fat", and cf. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr) which nudges
this story about a mass murder into the realm of lowbrow comedy, and the
story's final snipe, "What the hell, stranger things had happened in
Washington", which is a political one, are pure Pynchon.

best

> on 21/8/04 4:41 AM, Ghetta Life wrote:
> 
>> And the use 
>> of this "cannibal" to exact this judgment is almost racist. At the very
>> least it is an overwrought contrivance.
> 
> Indeed. To designate "the Windigo", which is a Native American spiritual
> belief, as "a moral failure", is very much a type of religious
> discrimination. (Note how the exalted state is labelled by the Western
> anthropologist as a "psychosis", where within Western mythologies such
> divine visions would be called "miracles".) Throughout the story Pynchon
> identifies "the Windigo psychosis" with the Christian Eucharist, and that is
> the spanner in the works which King has chosen to ignore.
> 
> best
>