V2-V, Part 1

[alice wellintown]

Thanks. Some very fine notes and comments here, analysis, of Profane
characterization. The fact that Profane is described as Pig-like is
rather important. We read in the critical writings that Pynchon has a
thing for pigs and we can certainly trace his interest in them from V.
to GR. Here in V. pigs are not quite the complex preterite puritan
figures of P's or slothrop's or, and this is where the focus should
be, on Adams's and America's heretical puritan ancestry, but are, none
and never the less, related to slothrop's preterite and puritan sloth.
To get this we need to read Adams. Adams is not merely another major
source for Pynchon, but his most important influence. We can not hope
to understand the sloth of slothrop or stencil, not, and this is where
we need to think deeper, Benny Profane (the cahtolics and jews and
bums, the sick crew atheists...) unless we understand how P applies
Adams.  The forces of unity and multiplicityare at work here. For
Benny, although he doesn't quite get it, LOVE is Half he needs. The
other Half, the Jewish Half, well...will continue to cut itself and
stuble in the shadow of Job and Prometheus.

Why Porto (my husband buys my coffee at Porto Rico Importing Co. on
Bleeker Street) Ricans? Henry Adams spells it that way too: Porto
Rico. The obvious reason is history; NYC's history and the history
that Adams describes. The coal power vs. gun power theme that P takes
from Adams (he sets up 1984 and the cartels) is a major one in GR and
every major work of his after V.