Reading

[Bekah]

You inspire me,  Laura.  I would never have thought of that and yet I  
see it so readily.   Well said, too.   Thanks.

Bekah



On Dec 29, 2008, at 12:29 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> Another Slothrop-Gottfried connection:  p.469-470, where Slothrop  
> finds himself inside his own cock:  "He is enclosed.  Everything is  
> about to come, come incredibly, and he's helpless here in this  
> exploding enterprise... red flesh echoing... an extraordinary sense  
> of waiting to rise..."
>
> This could easily be a description of Gottfried in the rocket.  It  
> happens when Slothrop's having sex with Bianca, and there's a tie- 
> in between the three as abused children, and all children whose  
> futures are compromised by The Bomb.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: János Székely <miksaapja at gmail.com>
>
>>
>> Having just re-read GR for word-by-word (not for the second time)  
>> something
>> struck me. I don't know if anybody has noticed or written about the
>> following.
>>
>> Close to the geometrical center of the book there is a well-hidden,
>> comically-camouflaged passage about the USS Badass missing the  
>> hijacked
>> U-Boot. The two courses intersect in space but not in time*  
>> because* Bodine
>> has laced the coffee in the Badass mess with "a massive dose of  
>> Oneirine".So
>> the psychotropic effect of Jamf's drug turns into physical reality  
>> in some
>> unexplained way.
>> Now both Imipolex G (a polyimide) and Oneirine (an indole) are Jamf's
>> inventions, both are aromatic heterocyclic compounds and their  
>> monomers are
>> rather similar. Even the smell can be the same. The combined  
>> presence of
>> Imipolex G (responsible for sexual arousal) and Oneirine  
>> (responsible for
>> the time-modulating, delusion-turned-into-reality effect) could  
>> account for
>> both Slothrop's map and the closing two subchapters, where, if we  
>> stick to
>> narrative continuity, the same rocket which was launched with  
>> Gottfried
>> inside in 1945 returns sometime in the Nixon era. (There is an  
>> explicit
>> parallel between Slothrop and Gottfried as the latter "knows" the  
>> smell of
>> Imipolex. "It was in a room when he fell asleep so loing ago, so  
>> deep in
>> sweet paralyzed childhood," suggesting he was also conditioned in  
>> a way by
>> Jamf. Slothrop also recognizes the smell. But that might be also  
>> the smell
>> of Oneirine.)
>> This is not an explanation, just a "closing in on", not forgetting  
>> that the
>> description if the  "Oneirine haunt" can be easily applied to  
>> Pynchonic
>> fiction itself etc., starting new cycles of interpretation.
>>
>> János
>
>