AtDDtA(15): What if They Weren't Harmonica Players?

[Dave Monroe]

   "Meanwhile, now and then in the interstices of what was after all
not a perpetual midwestern holiday, the former crew of the
Inconvenience became aware of doubts creeping in.  What if they
weren't harmonica players? really? If it was all just some elaborate
hoax they'd chosen to play on themselves, to keep distracted from a
reality too frightening to receive the vast undiscriminating light of
the Sky, perhaps the not-to-be-spoken-of betrayal now firmly installed
in the heart of the ... the Organization whose name curiously had
begun to escape them ... some secret deal, of an unspecified nature,
with an ancient enemy ... but they could find no entries in any of the
daily Logs to help them remember ...
   "Had the gone, themselves, through some mutation into imperfect
replicas of who they once were? meant  to revisit the scenes of
unresolved conflicts, the way ghosts are said to revisit places where
destinies took a turn [...]?" (AtD, Pt. II, pp. 422-3)


"What if they weren't harmonica players?"

What if they aren't Chums of Chance?  Huh?  Huh?  Help!


"some elaborate hoax they'd chosen to play on themselves"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness et al. ...


"the vast undiscriminating light of the Sky"

This strikes me as possibly a new yet important trope for Pynchon.  Help!


"the not-to-be-spoken-of betrayal"

Not-to-be-written-of, either, apparently.  Help!


"the ,,, the Organization"

The Chums of Chance.  Or ...?


"some secret deal"

Cf. "the not-to-be-spoken-of betrayal"


"but they could find no entries in any of the daily Logs to help them remember"

Their situation has no precedent in any of the Chums novels. They have
been betrayed, isolated and brainwashed, and they even doubt whether
they are the authentic Chums. The following is not a spoiler: Any
elementary handbook of plotting will tell you that they can't just
single up all lines at the end of this episode and fly their ship
"cheerly" on to the next adventure.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_397-428#Page_422


"imperfect replicas of who they once were"

The next section IS titled "Bilocations."  But cf., e.g., ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Snatchers


"scenes of uneresolved conflicts"

Freud advanced a theory of personality development that centered on
the effects of the sexual pleasure drive on the individual psyche. At
particular points in the developmental process, he claimed, a single
body part is particularly sensitive to sexual, erotic stimulation.
These erogenous zones are the mouth, the anus, and the genital region.
The child's libido centers on behavior affecting the primary erogenous
zone of his age; he cannot focus on the primary erogenous zone of the
next stage without resolving the developmental conflict of the
immediate one.

A child at a given stage of development has certain needs and demands,
such as the need of the infant to nurse. Frustration occurs when these
needs are not met; Overindulgence stems from such an ample meeting of
these needs that the child is reluctant to progress beyond the stage.
Both frustration and overindulgence lock some amount of the child's
libido permanently into the stage in which they occur; both result in
a fixation. If a child progresses normally through the stages,
resolving each conflict and moving on, then little libido remains
invested in each stage of development. But if he fixates at a
particular stage, the method of obtaining satisfaction which
characterized the stage will dominate and affect his adult
personality....

[...]

In the genital stage, as the child's energy once again focuses on his
genitals, interest turns to heterosexual relationships. The less
energy the child has left invested in unresolved psychosexual
developments, the greater his capacity will be to develop normal
relationships with the opposite sex. If, however, he remains fixated,
particularly on the phallic stage, his development will be troubled as
he struggles with further repression and defenses.

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/freud/develop.html


"Perhaps even surrogates recruited to stay behind on the ground,
allowing the 'real' Chums to take to the Skies and so escape some
unbearable situation? [...] the Chums had needed them ... they came"

Who are the Chums going into this chapter?  Do the same ones exit it?
Diegetically, are there ANY actual, "real" Chums of Chance here
whatsoever?  Help!


"modest fines for wrong notes"

[James] Brown ... had a practice of directing, correcting and
assessing fines on members of his band who broke his rules, such as
wearing unshined shoes, dancing out of sync or showing up late on
stage....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brown#Brown_as_bandleader

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brown

http://www.hour.ca/music/music.aspx?iIDArticle=11069


"other ensembles playing music of newer races, arrangemnts of Negro
blues, Polish polkas, Jewish kelzmer"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polka

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klezmer


"the old performance sites of Venice, Italy, and Paris, France,a mnd
the luxury resorts of old Mexico"

Why those in particular?  Help!


"skeins of narrow streets"

Cf. ...

"No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trove, Who's once been set his
tryst with Trystero." (Lot 49, p. 58)

http://wordsmith.org/words/skein.html

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0509&msg=97516