St Veronica's & The White Visitation / GRGR 1,8 misunderstanding

[Michael Bailey]

On 12/20/05, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> On 21/12/2005 Mark Wright AIA wrote:
>
> > You think of it as a purpose-built institutional building,
>
> Not necessarily. Not at all in fact. Where did I say that?
>

You didn't, but I did in asking for examples.

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The idea of misinterpreting and misunderstanding has come up;  in the
context of
readers ignoring an author's intentions, and in the context of an
author playing with a reader's expectations.
I'm not sure where my thoughts about Slothrop fall.

First, the seduction we see in 1,4 is initiated by his partner-to-be:
"...just as he was reaching to pick his nose...a heavy
explosion....'Not thunder either,' he puzzled, out loud.
'No, it's the Germans,' her friend with rolled blonde fringes under a
checked kerchief doing some monster routine here..."coming to get him,
they especially love fat, plump Americans-"
(V pp 25-26)
If the locus of control of at least some of the seductions is outside
Slothrop, there's an intrusion of random factors.
Or at least other factors besides Slothrop.

Second, I don't think we're supposed to completely agree with
Pointsman about the interpretation of the phenomenon.  The exact
correspondence of stars on the map is rather stunning, though.
What would I make of it if I were on the scene?
Is Slothrop's promiscuity drawing down the wrath of God in the form of
the V-2 strikes? Or, non-religiously, is there something about his
encounters that physically attracts the rockets?

How much of causality can be inferred from a coincidence of places? 
Would the rockets have fallen differently had Slothrop been celibate?

Is his placement of the stars accurate? Bloat, and by extension, all
the other Thems up the chain, seem uninterested in the details of the
anecdotes - which would be a useful cross-check.  (Later in the book
Speed and Perdu work on this)
  It would seem vital to know if there's a standard lag, for instance;
and does the strike occur near the meeting-place or the trysting
place?

Pointsman runs ahead of the facts, because that allows him to think he
is going to make a breakthrough.  He posits precognition, and wonders
whether Slothrop is responding to sound, light, or the "transmarginal
leap" of the survivors-to-be, when there has not been a satisfactory
proof of a causal link in either direction.

"organizing random caries into cabals" is he?


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"Acceptance, forgiveness, love - now that's a philosophy of life!"
-Woody Allen, as Broadway Danny Rose