re KK

pynchonoid pynchonoid at yahoo.com
Tue Aug 30 01:02:22 CDT 2005


[...] I 
agree that "meaning" and significance are being played
with in the 
riffs on the phrase or sentence in question here, but
I'm arguing that 
it's Slothrop who's doing it. Deliberately. And for a
reason.

"These changes on the text 'You never did the Kenosha
Kid' are 
occupying Slothrop's awareness as the doctor leans in
... " (61)

Interesting choice of words, there, "occupying
Slothrop's awareness". [...] 

Given the military/imperialist meaning of "occupy",
Pynchon's use of it might be seen to undercut the
notion that Slothrop is in control or somehow managing
to compose these variations on Kenosha Kid - 
These changes on the text [...] are are 
occupying Slothrop's awareness as the doctor leans in
... " (61)

Restoring the remainer of the passage that was,
strangely, removed, the reader learns that "the doctor
leans in out of the white overhead to wake him and
begin the session."

So, Slothrop has been asleep, and, apparently, 'These
changes on the text "You never did the Kenosha Kid'
have been "occupying" Slothrop's sleeping (or, perhaps
more accurately, dreaming) consciousness (Pynchon's
word is "awareness").

How's Slothrop doing anything "deliberately" if he's
asleep?

Otherwise, it's an interesting argument as far as it
goes, and one that could work assuming you take it a
bit further and add some more stuff that Pynchon chose
to leave out. You could assume, for example, that
Slothrop is a particularly skillful lucid dreamer, -
Pynchon doesn't say Slothrop's not one, after all,
just as he doesn't say anything about Slothrop
controlling these "changes" as he sleeps - and that
he's using this skill to manipulate his KK dreams
before the doctor wakes him up. 

Or you could make up something else that's not in the
text to add further support to the argument that the
sleeping Slothrop is "deliberately" composing these
changes on the KK text. Sky's the limit.





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