V2-V, Part 1

[alice wellintown]

Amoeba here seems to connote "having no definite shape" or "protean
blob" or something close to "formless" or "without unity" or to stick
with Adams's term,  "Chaos". Not to repeat myself again, but, again,
Benny is without form, as Stencil is without unity and origin  because
they represent and are the dialectic of Adams's yo-yo (sometimes
physical--from Washington to Europe, sometimes theoretical &
scientific--from Agassiz to Darwin to Faraday, more often
meta-physical--from the Greeks to St. Thomas to the Virgin to
Descartes to Kant to Schopenhauer) and his education. In many
respects, because young P has the advantage of 50-odd years, he easily
mocks Adams, and certainly Agassiz and other "racist" scientists, but
he is completelysucked in by Adams too. Adams, as one early and
perceptive critic noted, "raped"  him. The irony of this fact is not
lost on the elder P who, when looking back on his youth, always
through a glass darkly, perhaps with some anxiety, although with bold
honesty (giving the lie to his reputation) admits that he has accepted
Adams as his "great teacher" (a phrase Adams employs to descibe men
like King, Hey, Darwin). Speaking of youthful and dim  reflections,
the Porto Rican history in V., while not as obvious as the Cuban
history in Farina's BDSL, is certainly something, to use Tom's
description of Farina's less than easy and less than mere biographical
methods, "he works his ass off" on.

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:38 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Profane is described as amoebalike in Chapter 1, Part V.  Then, in Chapter V, Part 1, Profane shoots a hapless alligator and:  "Blood began to seep out amoebalike to form shifting patterns with the weak glow of the water.  Abruptly, the flashlight went out."
>
> Is young Pynchon just overly enamored of that odd-looking word?  Or is this a deliberate pairing of images in 1-V and V-1?  Profane, hapless and amoebalike, piggy and soft, generally useless, walks bright aisles in the first image.  Profane, a killer, leeches the inner amoeba-form out of another hapless animal in the second image.  Darkness results.  Are these shapeless amoeba precursors to the squishy octopus Grigori (sp?) in GR?  In the first image, the imaginary light of the aisles adds harshness.  In the second, it's the bullet from Profane's gun?  Are the two connected?
>
> Laura
> (equidistant from today's and tomorrow's caffeine)
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>>Sent: Aug 11, 2010 1:04 AM
>>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>Subject: V2-V, Part 1
>>
>>Sorry About arriving late. I have been very busy and continue to be
>>pretty busy in a kind of insulated cultural community, but will try
>>to contribute and put out some thoughts on this chapter.
>>
>>A year has passed from the opening scene and Benny is still yo-yo ing
>>now on the NYC subway. He is again described as a kind of overfed
>>plastic blob, a passive window shopper.
>>
>>> " Still great amoebalike boy, soft and fat, hair cropped close and
>>> growing in patches, eyes small like a pig's and set too far apart.
>>> Road work had done nothing to improve the outward Profane, or the
>>> inward one either. Though the street by claimed a big fraction of
>>> Profane's age, it and he remained strangers in every way."   ..He
>>> walked; walked, he thought sometimes, the aisles of a bright,
>>> gigantic supermarket, his only function to want"
>>
>>The image moves further toward the plasticity of animated cartoons
>>
>>" He was visited on a lunar basis by these great unspecific waves of
>>horniness, whereby all women within a certain age group and figure
>>envelope became immediately and impossibly desirable. He emerged from
>>these spells with eyeballs still oscillating and a wish that his neck
>>could rotate through the full 360 degrees."
>>
>>He falls asleep once then twice. First time he is awakened and the
>>tone of the writing gets jazzier and more syncopated and Profanes
>>attention seems less distant, more active.
>>
>>"On his eleventh or twelfth transit Profane fell asleep and dreamed.
>>He was awakened close to noon by three Puerto Rican kids named
>>Tolito, Jose and Kook, short for Cucarachito. They had this act,
>>which was for money even though they knew that the subway on weekday
>>mornings, no es bueno for dancing and bongos."
>>
>>Why Puerto Ricans? I think another colonial reference. Why are they
>>helping Profane, the human yo-yo , dreaming of his own dissolution?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>