The Holy KK

[Paul Mackin]

Paul Mackin wrote:

> Paul Di Filippo wrote:
>
>> My one insight into the whole Kenosha Kid Affair, offered on the list 
>> years ago, is that "Kenosha" might be a pun on "kenosis", a 
>> theological term meaning "the voluntary abasement of the second 
>> person of the Trinity in becoming  man."  The entries for the words 
>> are literally adjacent to each other in my Merriam Webster's.  How 
>> improbable is it that TRP could've stumbled across this conjunction 
>> and made use of it?
>>
>> As to how the process of kenosis applies to Slothrop, I am less 
>> clear....
>>
>>
> Could it be that Slothrop is a figure who has been pretty much emptied 
> out in the course of the novel. In other words we would be applying 
> the Greek meaning of "kenosis" (evacuation, emptying out) in addition 
> to the theological meaning the word seems to be restricted to in English?
>
By the way there's that Crucification like scene at the being of part 4.

The sand-colored churchtops rear up on Slothrop's horizons, apses out to 
four sides like rocket fins guiding the streamlined spires ... chiseled 
in the sandstone he finds waiting the mark of consecration, a cross in a 
circle. At last, lying one afternoon spread-eagled at his ease in the 
sun, at the edge of one of the ancient Plague towns he becomes a cross 
himself, a crossroads, a living intersection where the judges have come 
to set up a gibbet for a common criminal who is to be hanged at noon. 
(pp. 424-5)