V ch. 5 part 2 Imaginary Alligators, Real buckshot

[Mark Kohut]

I can't speak about your subconscious, but either word choice below is a 
degradation from 

being a natural woman with natural woman's wear........more of TRPs perversions 
of the modern era,
so to speak?



----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Thu, August 19, 2010 1:29:40 PM
Subject: Re: V ch. 5 part 2 Imaginary Alligators, Real buckshot

Oops!  That's an inflatable, not glowing brassiere that Mafia's dangling.  What 
in hell's going on in my subconsciousness?

LK

-----Original Message-----
>From: kelber at mindspring.com
>Sent: Aug 19, 2010 2:26 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: V ch. 5 part 2 Imaginary Alligators, Real buckshot
>
>Great analysis, Joseph.
>
>Re: the sexism.  What can I say?  A passage like this makes me uncomfortable as 
>a woman:
>
>"At the moment she was naked and dangling a glowing brassiere before the 
>frustrated claws of Fang who was Siamese, gray and neurotic. 'Bouncy, bouncy,' 
>she was saying.  'Is the dweat big kitties angwy cause he tant play wif the 
>bwa?  EEEE, he so cute and ickle.'"  Are Rand's ideas laughable on their own, or 
>do they derive extra sneers because a woman is expounding on them?  Is young P, 
>fresh out of the frat, so solidly a feminist, that we can take this passage to 
>be a critique of sexist caricatures?  Frankly, the child molester and rat 
>sodomizer were treated with less loathing, more sensitivity.
>
>Moving on:
>
>In the pre-New York Profane sequence, Profane's On The Street.  But it's here, 
>below the street, that he meets Stencil.  The Whole Sick Crew's up above, and 
>both Profane and Stencil are tunneling down beneath, looking for hidden meaning 
>and encountering each other.  The answers to the questions of the day (war, 
>imperialism, industrialism, inhumanity) are not to be found with the 
>self-proclaimed intelligentsia, but in the hidden social underpinnings that 
>literally prop them up.  
>
>
>If Stencil is, in fact, the alligator, then he and Profane both share an 
>amoebalike quality.  They have yet to find their final form.  They differ from 
>the W.S.C. by their inability, or unwillingness to define themselves (as avant 
>garde artist, writer, musician, etc.).  Even when Stencil talks about himself in 
>the third person, he's analyzing his identity, not proclaiming it shallowly to 
>the world.
>
>Laura
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>
>>
>>I have a hard time seeing the sexism here. How is Mafia/Rand treated  
>>as less of a sexist caricature than Schoenmaker. Why is Rand/Mafia  
>>and her bizarre brand  of liberation less a proper target of satire  
>>than Schoenmaker the nose job man,  Bongo Shaftsbury the imperial  
>>thug and would-be child molester, or Fairing the missionary to those  
>>vermin truly dwelling in darkness,  or even the milder Zeitsuss the  
>>aspiring union leader.. All of these are about the heroic poses of  
>>venal  people, and their capacity, by donning heroic masks, to  
>>generate followers and endorse  cruel power structures..  
>>Considering  Ayn Rand's nasty impact on US culture, the attack is  
>>presciently well targeted and more  comical than vicious.  Also, the  
>>entire scene is observed from the point of view of Roony Winsome  who  
>>is not exactly a reliable or admirable narrator..  By including Mafia/ 
>>Rand and Winsome in the company of the Whole Sick Crew Pynchon is  
>>expanding the sense of the importance of what is generated in the  
>>avant reaches of culture during times of transition. There is no room  
>>for benign passivity in this vision. Benny's passivity is at the  
>>center of a lot of pain, invoking the suffering aspect of Buddhism  
>>without the mindful  joy and awakened state of peace. I find myself  
>>sympathetic but with zero admiration; he embodies the passivity that  
>>empowers imperial  greed and violence and  and tends toward personal  
>>impotence and self destruction.
>>
>>We find out in the second part of this  Chapter that the alligator  
>>was Stencil. Apparently managing to escape in the darkness following  
>>the shot.  Ah the dangers of investigative research. Stencil is  
>>connected to the great games afoot, but he is also looking for the  
>>truth of his Father's life. If we look back to the Egyptian mythology  
>>again, Stencil is aligned with Set (Stencil minus cil) and  is  
>>animated by  the principle of un-killable darkness, wildness,  the  
>>desert.  Both in Winsome's weird connection to a plot to foster an  
>>nuclear attack on Moscow, Mafia's racism and exploitation in the name  
>>of personal liberation, and in this near killing we are beginning to  
>>see that the whole sick crew contains serious rifts, that the  
>>humanity of friendship is not enough to prevent even the mildest  
>>attempt at creating a counter-culture from becoming the seedbed of  
>>violence.  Profane has been seduced into imagining large alligators,  
>>( the largest confirmed sighting was 2 feet) and that he is killing  
>>them to prevent an equally imaginary threat.  He ends up more  
>>frightened of actual sex  with a smart kind and attractive woman than  
>>spending his days shooting things in a sewer.
>>
>>Stencil represents the foundation of resistance through understanding  
>>how things got to be this way , the analysis side of analysis and  
>>prescription( in the tradition of  Marx, Jesus,  Gautama Buddha, Tom  
>>Paine, and Adam Smith). Maybe that is too  naive. Does Stencil  
>>represent a necessary  foundation of resistance or the delusion of  
>>cause and effect?  Can self-reflection bring about  change in  
>>direction ? Can humans by any means resist the pervasive juggernaut  
>>of the paradigm of war?  For Stencil it is not his analysis that is  
>>most potent in this pursuit , but his empathy with the dispossessed  
>>and the untamed.
>>
>>I don't actually think Pynchon has resolved these questions within  
>>himself, but they are the logical questions of a post religious world  
>>view and Pynchon is determined to `be our Stencil, our Virgil our  
>>Beatrice  and to force us to reckon honestly with our profane  
>>versions of Hell, Heaven and  worlds between. The reader finds him or  
>>herself wondering is any experience  spiritually transformative, any  
>>love divine? I think Pynchon mostly  leaves that as the door  
>>untaken;  the closest we get to Beatrice is the tragically failed  
>>union of feminine and masculine which is  great romance at the center  
>>of the wild world, the deep  and palpable sadness in Malta and  
>>Manhattan, Egypt,  Europe and Southwest Africa. The subject of the  
>>next chapter.
>>
>>I think that about does it for me on CH 5 of V.
>>
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