VLVL Re: Interim

[jbor]

on 8/2/04 5:33 PM, Toby G Levy wrote:

> Let me take advantage of this interim to ask some questions that have
> been bugging me and I haven't seen any satisfactory answers to (although
> I admit in advance to charges of inattention, so bear with me, please).
> 
> 1.  from page 227: "Somehow the Doc had been authorized in those days to
> send people, Weed included, a form that required them to come to his
> offices at a certain time."  Who authorized this? Is there any evidence
> besides this one word "authorized" that would lead one to think that Dr
> Elasmo was working for "Them?"

We are told that Dr Elasmo's office is in "a gutted former public, perhaps
federal, building" (239) and that Weed quickly becomes "an old bullpen
regular" (240). Lots of mysterious business is being transacted both inside
and outside of Elasmo's office. Later, after Frenesi has organised Weed's
set-up, she finds out about Weed's visits to Elasmo from Brock:
 
    And then he told her, carefully, in detail often crude
    enough to make her afraid, of Weed's visits to downtown
    San Diego for "therapy sessions," Brock called them --
    "Too much math, too many abstract ideas, so we gave him
    some reality, just enough, to counteract that, no worse
    than going to the dentist. Till after a while he could
    begin to see our side. (240)

Frenesi assumes that this means Weed had been "working for" Brock all along,
but that's not verified by Brock, and it's not clear whether Weed really
understands why he keeps being called back to Elasmo's, or why he keeps
going, or even what's happening to him there (226-8). We never find out for
sure either.

There are hints all through the section that, as well as Frenesi, Weed, or
Rex, or even Jinx, might also be double-crossing some or all of the others.
Pynchon evokes the paranoia and uncertainty of the times by keeping the
reader similarly unsure about who's really double-crossing who.

> 2. from page 229: Is anyone else bothered by this statement? "Once he
> would have proclaimed "Because in this country nobody in power gives a
> shit about any human life but their own. This forces us to be humane --
> to attack what matters more than life to the regime and those it serves,
> their money and their property.""  I thought that before he was pressed
> into action, Weed was a head-in-the-clouds Math professor, without
> political beliefs.

Weed has "a moment of light" on the day of the first police assault on the
campus, which inspires him to lead some of the panicked students to "safety"
to Rex's apartment (206-7), and to agree to become one of the leaders of
ADHOC (208). At that time, just after his "law-enforcement epiphany" (207),
in those early days of PR3, he would have proclaimed to his acolytes the
former, more idealistic, sentiments about non-violence and "humane
revolution" (229). But in the interim, with whatever is happening to him at
Elasmo's, with things falling apart in PR3 (232.37-233.4), with his
suspicions about Frenesi (228.32-5), with his arguments with Weed, with the
harassment from his "boobish" followers -- "as days gathered and a feeling
of crisis began to grow" (228-9) -- he has lost all patience and his lessons
about why they shouldn't use violence have become more terse and pragmatic
and "unhopeful".

> 3. from page 234: ""Weed is an FBI plant," Frenesi told him. "His job was
> to lead us all someday up the wrong piece of trail and guess who'd be
> waiting.""  and a couple of sentences earlier it is clear that Rex and
> she are searching for the appropriate time to bump Weed off.  My
> question: How does one sink any lower than this; how can any reader, of
> whatever political persuasion have any sympathy for Frenesi after she
> commits this heinous act?

Indeed. However, in the moment of deepest crisis at Rex's, and afterwards,
back on the campus when the action is in full swing there, she also displays
great courage, which Prairie takes note of (247-8).

> 4. from page 238: The banter of the worms playing cards inside Weed's
> nose.  Isn't this lifted from the bats playing cards in the 1950s comic
> strip Pogo?  And wasn't the poker playing bats lifted from somewhere
> else, although I can't remember what it was?

The pinochle-playing "worms of song" are from a gruesome children's ditty
known as 'The Hearse Song':

http://www.alsirat.com/deathlore/worms.html

Don't know about the source of the dialogue, but it seems like a standard,
if sloppy, pinochle hand.

best