You never did the Kenosha Kid?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 31/08/2005, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> Willfully obfuscatory mindgame as in "Hey, they're trying to 
> experiment on me, so I'm going to subvert the experiment."  Probably 
> not.  Willfully obfuscatory mindgame as in "Hey, I'm about to be put 
> under.  I wonder how long I can force myself to stay awake?"  
> Possibly.  I've  tried this the handful of times I've been 
> anesthetized (kind of wish it would happen more often.  Today, for 
> instance.)

There's still the issue of whether Slothrop is asleep or awake before 
"the doctor leans in [...] to wake him". If he's awake and only 
pretending to be asleep, which seems to be the case (his "awareness", 
the numerical itemised points and subpoints both before and after the 
supposed waking etc), then it's clear that he is deceiving the doctors, 
on that score at least.

And I guess the other question to ask is, why does Slothrop's 
recollection of the incident in the Roseland Ballroom (to all accounts 
and purposes a fairly "truthful" and realistic account) gradually 
degenerate into a surrealistic parody of a pulp Western story (like 
Parkhill's 'The Kenosha Kid'). One possible answer to this question is 
that Slothrop's mindgame or interference strategy has worked.

I like the "Kute Korrespondences" ... correspondence. I also think that 
a connection can be made to Slothrop's character's eventual 
disintegration or dispersal in the text, where he seemingly moves from 
the "fictional" world into the reader's "real" world, which is pretty 
similar to what he's doing (or trying to do) with 'The Kenosha Kid' 
story back in St Veronica's.

There's also Slothrop's fave comic book superhero, "four color 
Plasticman" (206-7), and "Sundial"", with whom Slothrop is identified 
in the text. Note also Sundial's special superhero talent:

( [...] The name of the hero, or being, was Sundial. The frames never 
enclosed him -- or it -- for long enough to tell. Sundial, flashing in, 
flashing out again, came from "across the wind", by which readers 
understood "across some flow, more or less sheet or vertical: a wall in 
constant motion" -- over there was a different world where Sundial took 
care of business they would never understand.)" (472)

best