The Ivory Dentist Dance

[alice wellintown]

Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a
narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing,
moreover, a certain remarkable  unity, which might almost
seem the result of artistic arrangement.	(HSG.1)


While it seems almost common to connect Pynchon with Hawthorne
(Pyncheon) and Melville; Chase's study, _The American Novel and Its
Tradition_ has been mentioned here recentlly, and other texts that,
while apparently misread by those who don't actually have any idea
what it's like to teach works like Pynchon, Melville, Hawthorne, to
real students, but are only, as Melville aptly described them, the
parents of foundling books that, while lost, are found on the
penthouse balconies of  Ivory Towers where sagacious babel blown from
bloated tenured bellows bathe the sychophants and fools with esoteric
puke polluted yet politely portioned out on fine china ans silver
plates iullumianted.

Crafting a fiction around one central metaphor that unifies its
sometimes very disparate and complex elements of character, imagery,
and action.   (FFP-see Weisenburger,S,
JSTOR: American Literature: Vol.62, No.4, p 692-697)


The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a
human  countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward
storm and sunshine, but expressive, also, of the long lapse of mortal
life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within.
(HSG.1)

The deep projection of the second story gave the house such a
meditative look, that you could not pass it without the idea that it
had
secrets to keep, and an eventful history to moralize upon. In front,
just on the edge of the unpaved sidewalk, grew the
Pyncheon-elm, which, in reference to such trees as one usually meets
with, might well be termed gigantic.	(HSG.18)

When he'd been younger Tim used to think of the house as a person, and
say hello to it each time he came over, as if it
actually were peeking around the maple at him…The house had a face on
the end, A pleasant old face, windows for eyes and
nose, a face that always seemed to be smiling. (TSI,SL.148)

Like Grover's house, the Big Houses of the estates also had faces, but
without such plain, gambreled honesty: Instead
there were mysterious deep eyes fringed in gimcrackery and wrought
iron masks, cheeks tattooed in flowered tiles,
great portcullised mouths with rows of dead palm trees for teeth, and
to visit one of them was like reentering sleep…
(TSI,SL.158)


It was a death that blasted with strange horror the humble name of the
dweller in the cottage, and made it seem almost
a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of his
habitation, and obliterate his place and memory from
among men…he was about to build his house over an unquiet grave. His
home would include the home of the dead and
buried wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter a kind of
privilege to haunt…   (HSG.3-4)

there was a claim, through an Indian deed, confirmed by a subsequent
grant of the General Court, to a vast and as yet
unexplored and unmeasured tract of eastern lands. These
possessions--for as such they might almost certainly be
reckoned--comprised the greater part of what is now known as Waldo
County, in the State of Maine, and were more extensive
than many a dukedom, or even a reigning prince's territory, on
European soil.			(HSG.10)

A Defile of Ghosts growing, with the Years, more desperate and savage,
to Settlers and Indians alike. You'd not wish
this Line to pass too close to them, I shouldn't think.  (M&D.614)

The mantle, or rather the ragged cloak, of old Matthew Maule, had
fallen upon his children. They were half believed
to inherit mysterious attributes; the family eye was said to possess
strange power. Among other
good-for-nothing properties and privileges, one was especially
assigned them: of exercising an influence over
people's dreams.  (HSG.17)

"I'm talking another Language, in my sleep,--Dixon?" "Don't see what
the whim-wham's about,--"
"Possession!-That is, somebody else's soul, possessing my body, whilst
I sleep,--that's what it's about!"
"Half the camp hears it, Some take it for Indians."  (M&D.610)


CRASH   for Caroll P. Ginsberg


I am with you Carroll Pynchon Ginsberg in Rockland When the French Radio
Station Reports Our Dear Deleuze is Dead.

 Assembled in a company, Doctor Dolittle’s whole sick crew.
 Fraud, Hilarious, Quack and Gold, Doctor Kavorkian  too.
 They work in Psychodontia, Paranoia, Psychosis,
And Transfenestration adieus.
 They work on their tans, their billfolds and yachts
 But their patients have little value.
 The patients it seems, unworthy of dreams
 Are simply sick rats in a game.
 The Doctors are busy, their rounds keep them dizzy,
 With prescriptions to write without shame.
 Now one patient there, in the good doctors’ care,
 in a dismal catatonic tone,
said Doctors beware, I'll D.C. your care,
 if you please-just leave me alone.”
 They offered  a nose job, they offered her pain,
 They studied her ego and Id.
 They prescribed drugs to alter her brain,
 But the one thing none of them did,
 Was interpretation of her castration dreams,
 Which engaged her each night while she slept.
 Why they haunted her so with those shadowy scenes,
 Why she shivered and shook and she wept.
 When this patient stood up in order to speak,
 Her sad story she offered to tell
 Dr. Dolittle cried, "Not even a peep,
 I've too many prescriptions to sell.
 There was silence supreme, "Forget sex and bad dreams,"
 Dr. Dolittle said with a smirk,
 "Now where is my pad, there are profits to be had,
 Now all of you get back to work.”
 The patient stood there in a frustrated stance
 "I'm paying the bills here, you know!"
 As she shuffled her feet in a thorozene dance,
 and started her story of woe.
 "When I was a young girl I lived by the shore..."
 "Skip all that cried the doctor in haste,
 and tell us-how are your teeth?” and he stepped to the door,
“For we don't have a minute to waste."
 "I'll skip fifty years," cried the patient in tears
 "And proceed without further remark,
 To the day when I lost my mind to my fears,
 As I stumbled and groped in the dark.
 A dentist, it seems, made the wrong diagnosis,
 I don’t need a hospital stay.”
 The do little doctor whispered, "Psychosis,
 Now lets talk of my fees and my pay."
 "Prescriptions and money, to me its not funny,"
  Said the patient to the window glare.
 "You are obtuse and greedy, while your patients are needy
 But the worst is you really don't care.
 Please listen dear doctors and tell me the truth,
 I need to be led not a stray.
 Are my dreams of castration, mental masturbation?
 And will your medicines chase them away?"
 Doctor Fraud stroked his beard, Hilarious thought it weird,
 Doctor Dolittle rubbed his head,
 But they offered no answer, to the thorozene dancer,
 Now the poor patient is CRAAASHSHshshshshsh
 Dead.

Paris / New York, 05 Nov 95---05 Apr 97

The rocket is a substitute for Love, for return, for
salvation, for redemption, for spontaneous, serendipitous
discovery of the endless cycle of love and life. The rocket
is systematic destruction, Its parabola structures "that
shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return." "Its
dumbness, its dead weight, its obstinate and palpable
mystery," is a false promise of power. The rocket is a
pornography, another plastic imitation. It breeds not love,
but paranoia. Paranoia, like Love is concerned with going
beyond the invisible, but paranoia is the exact antithesis
of Love in a world where opposites are unclear and the risk
of associating with anything on any side is great. So most
relationships here under the rockets spell are not based on
Love, but on exploitation, shallowness, cynicism,
information exchange. The treatment, the perception, that
humans are parts, replacement parts, rather than unique
beings militates against individuation through Love.