D&G divagation - is Professor Challenger a tumbler for Deleuze himself, and other natterings

[Michael Bailey]

well it's been on my mind...

that "plateau" Who does the Earth think it is
I said it was remarkably soothing, and that wasn't quite a lie,
it is disquieting in a soothing sort of way.

I mean, my heart goes out to Deleuze. One way to read the chapter is
as one of the self-lacerating passages in Joyce ("usylessy unreadable
book") - where the Professor Challenger (which in French would be
"sholl on zhay" right?) is giving a big
lecture and I'm tempted to make Challenger be Deleuze
(if it is a "roman a clef" and if assigning real-world names to
characters is a key,
then Challenger=Deleuze would be a tumbler in the lock???)

a ways into the lecture he becomes "hoarser, occasionally ... [emitting]
an apish cough"
(and I am envisioning
Deleuze in later life with reported lung problems and a cough - according to
Wikipedia) Then finally "It was over....Challenger, or what remained of him,
slowly hurried toward the *plane of consistency*, following a bizarre trajectory
with nothing relative left about it."

which of course makes me think of his final, and fatal, self-defenestration.
So one wonders if he was daydreaming his own demise.

Why did I find this chapter comforting?  The consolations of philosophy
that D would have brought to the mix, and the benefits of psychiatry that
G contributed underlie the whole book (or rhizome, if you will) and are woven
into the language.  The chapter (or "plateau" if you will, although the title
"A Thousand Plateaus" is misleading since there are only, like, 16 - but then
the actual Crying of Lot 49 never happens in the eponymous book, and I still
like it anyway though I was pissed first time thru) is filled with wonders that
I'm still not able to fully appreciate, let alone describe, and it's
in the middle
(or, really, towards the beginning) of much more.

It's almost as if Deleuze was saying, ok, let's caricature my life and spin it
out in the most unfavorable light, I'm a mad professor and my audience
is walking
out on me and I'm gonna die.  Now that we've got that settled, let's do
some philosphy.
I personally wish he would've, like quit smoking or at least cut down,
take a trip to the Riviera with his wife (Wikipedia sez he was married),
go to La Borda and participate in Guattari's group sessions there...
OTOH, maybe he did all those things (Wikipedia sez he was rather reclusive
and didn't supply much personal info)

but anyway, I still find this book immensely attractive, and Gallic in that
immensely attractive way like the French exchange student in the John Cusack
vehicle "Better Off Dead"

...though I won't pretend I understand it yet.

But, oh yeah, appreciating it as a fakebook is do-able.

I have to find a YouTube link to a Charlie Parker tune that the book
reminds me of, it goes
badabadah, ba [ sequence I can never remember ]
doobyoobydahby, [another flight I can't follow]
bah-doobadebop
bah-badahba-dah-bodt



-- 
"He ain't crazy, he's a-makin' pottery" - Finley Pater Dunne