Reading

[kelber at mindspring.com]

If we were all "immachinated" during the Cold War, are we still in that condition following the Cold War?  I'd argue that we're not.  Does anyone think the Cold War's still on?  Regardless of Bush and Co.'s attempts to make us feel that Iran's about to nuke us, terrorism, anarchistic and ill-defined, is the current anxiety.  Bomb exploding anywhere, anytime, right now.  Kind of a throwback to the last turn of the century of ATD.

I can remember the exact moment when the Cold War ended for me:  I was on the subway, in 1985 (?) reading an article about Gorbachev UNILATERALLY reducing some (medium range/long-range?) missiles.  I felt a weight I hadn't even known I was carrying leave me forever.  My own personal Slothrop/Gottfried rocket dissipating? 

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com>

>
>> 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 [...]
> 
>As Laura says, the description of Slothrop inside his
>own cock mirrors the description of Gottfried inside the Rocket, right down
>to the description of an explosion "getting ready to erupt, somewehere below
>his feet" (470), which echoes the description of Gottfried in the 
>Rocket on p. 760: "The first star hangs between his feet." So there's clearly
>a Slothrop/Gottfried connection here.
> 
>B-but wait, there's more: Compare these descriptions of something between or 
>below Slothrop's/Gottfried's feet with Greta's description of herself in the Imipolex
>costume (p. 488): "There was an abyss between my feet." So there is an additional
>link between Slothrop in his cock/Gottfried in the Rocket plus Imipolex shroud
>and Greta in her Imipolex costume. 
> 
>And the pattern with the void between the feet is repeated once again, on 
>p. 517, where the ""tightly steered passage of a "you" - the Rocket, but also 
>per implication the reader - is described: 
>"the unimaginable fires at your feet"...
> 
>So the link signaled by the "something between/below the feet" (which is of course 
>a description of someone inside the Rocket/the Machine) extends from Slothrop
>and Gottfried to Greta, a-and even to us, the readers. You didn't really think
>you could escape, did you? We're ALL immachinated.
> 
>Happy new year!
> 
>Tore