V-2nd - Chapter V, Part I

[Mark Kohut]

>From an annotation of a book on the Uncanny and the Gothic in European 
literature: 

It is clear, however, that the lower class and the emerging bourgeoisie were 
loath to discard their traditional beliefs. We can see their search for a sense 
of transcendent order and spiritual meaning in the continuing popularity of 
gothic performances that demonstrate that there was more than a residue of a 
religious calendar still operating in the public performative realm. Because 
this bourgeois culture could not turn away from God, it chose to be haunted, in 
its literature and drama, by God’s uncanny avatars: priests, corrupt monks, 
incestuous fathers and uncles. The gothic aesthetic emerged during this period 
as an ideologically contradictory and complex discourse system; a secularizing 
of the uncanny; a way of alternately valorizing and at the same time slandering 
the realms of the supernatural, the sacred, the maternal, and the primitive. 


I thought of this chapter in a loose associative way.

 


----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, August 10, 2010 2:32:03 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chapter V, Part I

I can see the Heart of Darkness reference (Father Fairing=Kurtz), though not 
sure there's any ivory-like prize hovering in the background.  Profane, like 
Marlow, takes the job (embarks on a quest) partly for adventure, partly for 
economic reasons.  What does Profane learn at the end?  That shooting alligators 
(militarism) is wrong?  But he does it anyway.  Then the light goes out.  He's 
forever tainted.  But why by this particular murder?  He's already bagged a 
number of other gators.  Somehow, passing through the hallowed ground of the 
Kurtz-like cannibal-priest gives him qualms about the whole thing.  Letting 
compassion, in any form, seep into a genocidal scenario ruins everything: it 
makes the colonialist feel guilty, without saving a single life.  This will all 
happen again in Chapter 9.

The Moby Dick allusions seem weaker.  Maybe, Alice, you can expound on them a 
little more?

LK

-----Original Message-----
>From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>

>
>certainly the colonialization and enocide theme is continued here with
>the priest and the rats, but the inanimate theme is bound to it as,
>although the chapter title sez Stencil goes West, Benny goes East,
>carrying, from the West, the Light and the Gun. Africa, of course, is
>East; so the Heart of Darkness Ivory theme here, and yes, Moby-Dick
>parody--the sharkskin suits, the labor organizations, the bums. The
>long description of the bum with a cadilac, another Jew, from Poland
>is intersting.