V2nd - Chapter 11 - V. is the Portrait of Dorian Gray

[Mark Kohut]

All this great stuff below is one reason why I still see Fausto as a portrait of 
the artist within V.....cameo bio of what the artist goes thru
in his pact to get the Truth........................

V. is the decline into the modern world.......her decadence is the way her 
decline plays out over time.....
picking up on my post of yesterday, V. is the tragedy of history

Paolo shows, as children do later in P's work, it can still be new again in some 
way....that history is comic, can be happy........


----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Wed, December 1, 2010 1:13:57 PM
Subject: Re: V2nd - Chapter 11 - V. is the Portrait of Dorian Gray

Sorry, backtracking here.

Fausto's confession seems to me to be about transformation.  He transforms from 
Fausto I, before the war, a young man contemplating the priesthood; to Fausto 
II, formed by the onset of war and Paola's birth; to Fausto III, who takes on 
the characteristics of non-humanity as a result of the encounter with the Bad 
Priest, which he describes later; and finally Fausto IV, not caused by any 
single event, but the inheritor of a physically and spiritually broken world.  
So the spiritual transformation goes something like:  1. religious, 2. 
pragmatic, 3. alienated, 4. accepting all that is the case.

But while he's talking about his spiritual transformation, he seems to be 
beseeching Paola not to change.  He's seen V./the Bad Priest.  Could that happen 
to Paola?

Stencil, his unintended reader, has a better understanding of V.'s 
transformation from a naive young girl to the Bad Priest.  Fausto has a right to 
be terrified for Paola if V. represents the transformation of Woman from Earth 
Goddess to Object, and/or the transformation of the Human into the Inanimate.  I 
think Pynchon's more interested in the latter, but I think, in this chapter, he 
touches on the former.

Here's Paola, indigenous, born of the rock: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf

Here's the Bad Priest: http://www.svedka.com/verify/?dest=undefined 

[and can I editorialize as a woman for a moment:  outside of the male robot in 
AI (who looks like Jude Law), are there any women who seriously fantasize about 
sex with a robot?  But female sex-robots seem to be a common male fantasy.  Is 
it fear of fatherhood? Or is it really that onerous to have to squeeze out a few 
minutes of conversation in exchange for sex?]

The Earth Goddess is the mother of the world.  The Bad Priest urges the local 
girls to become nuns.  The goal is to become non-human.  Why does V. have all 
these prostheses?  Why does Bongo-Shaftsbury have the prosthetic arm?  Is it 
some evil instinct?  Or because "we have the technology"?  Evan Godolphin 
suffers from low-tech implants.  Esther doesn't really fit in with the others - 
she has a small piece of gristle removed, but nothing added.

V. seems more evil than the others because her implants (the clock-eye, the 
belly-jewel)are ornamental, and therefore decadent.  But does Pynchon see her as 
decadent, or as a metaphor for the modern world?

V. is Dorian Gray's portrait.  She's the passive receptacle of the evil others 
do.  The others being the "They" of GR?  Or us?

Laura




-----Original Message-----
>From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>Sent: Nov 22, 2010 9:44 AM
>To: kelber at mindspring.com
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: V2nd - Chapter 11 - the tone
>
>I think pretty much all of what you speak of below was Pynchon's
>intention with Paola.  The lack of abstraction in the Maltese language
>means instead that only the real, concrete, earth-bound can be
>expressed.  Later, in GR, abstractions of scientific analysis give
>rise to the Rocket, and all that it entails.  And, yes, Paola, as an
>"ideal" female, is the attractor of all males.  This is more than a
>bit patronizing, and also at odds with someone who is supposed to be
>free of abstractions (because, really, the world of the novel has
>constructed the polar-opposite female "types," both of which are
>nothing if not abstractions).
>
>In the Chinese "Book of Changes" the first of the 64 possible
>hexagrams is "Ch'ien" which entails the concept of Creative
>Force/Movement (the purely "male" abstraction).  Conversely, the
>second hexagram is "K'un," meaning (among many other aspects) the
>Receptive.  This "receptive" is a part of Paola's mythological
>identity.
>
>David Morris
>
>On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 6:47 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>> Fausto talks about the Maltese language, and its inability to convey abstract 
>>ideas.  We can extrapolate that Fausto believes the true Maltese (Maltan?) is a 
>>whole person, continuous, un-fragmented.  The fragmentation results when foreign 
>>influences, and modernity are introduced, whether in the form of language, 
>>poetry, or bombs (which cause physical fragmentation too).
>>
>> What does Fausto want for Paola? (p. 346):  "May you be only Paola, one girl: a 
>>single given heart, a whole mind at peace."
>>
>> Is he too late to save her?  There's something about Paola that attracts any 
>>and all men (Pappy Hod, Pig Bodine, Profane, Rooney Winsome, McLintic Sphere, 
>>even Stencil).  Is it because they sense the single heart, the whole mind? 
>> Outwardly, she certainly seems fragmented.  1. Child of the Maltese rock, 2. 
>> Balloon-girl, playing at being an Italian dirigible, no longer wholly innocent 
>>or natural, 3.  Paola Hod, married to some skanky old Navy guy as a ticket to 
>>America, 4.Paola the barmaid, 5. Paola, the newest inductee into The Whole Sick 
>>Crew, 6. Paola, playing at being a prostitute named Ruby.  Why?
>>
>> Still, there seems to be some sort of moral core to her that keeps her a 
>>continuous character.  She's as pensive and serious as her father (who likewise 
>>doesn't come across as fragmented).  Can native-born, indigenous types escape 
>>the fragmentation of modernity by virtue of some innate spirituality?  It's a 
>>patronizing assumption, but is that what P.'s driving at here?