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

[Michael Bailey]

been saving this one, lots to react to!

Laura wrote:
> Sorry, backtracking here.
>

some of us relish the prospect

> 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.
>

righty-o!  so his graph is more of a step-function, or, he's come to
accept the formulation of Dnubietna (and what a great name that is:
Danube River, etna which is what they used to call Bunsen burners,
because of Etna the volcano...)

-- four states - and the first 2 transitions (the first bomb, the
death of the Bad Priest) were abrupt like a step-function
The 3rd transition ("no single event produced [Fausto IV]....That
curve is still rising") may be relapsing into the sinuous
curvaceousness of the history-snake, though - which might be more
natural for Fausto given Fausto I's original thoughts on the matter --
that is, "there

in the light of that, I sort of understand his not delineating a
separate Fausto V in honor of his mother's passing - I think he
figured that as a natural development and to be expected, and didn't
experience a discontinuity

(however, why does he say that if he identified his nationality more
with his mother that in that case there might have been a Fausto V? --
probably something to do with History???????????)

(also interesting is that the 3 years earlier passing of his father
didn't merit even a consideration of discontinuous state change)


> 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?
>

one certainly hopes not!  (joins Fausto in hoping not)

> 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.
>

I haven't really grokked the Mother-goddess references from this
chapter, although I'm a little bit cognizant of them from reading some
of the Wiccan literature over the years.  None of the Faustos is
actually drawn to the Mother-worship nor sees it as meritorious in
itself (though I'm inclined to do so) - his most memorable passage
about the Old Religion is the confuting of it with the intellectual
poverty of his native tongue, isn't it?

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

I wrote a (meritless, abominable) poem to her one time (in band camp)...

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

it sez I must be 21 years of age and refuses me entry, but there are
two robot-y looking chicks guarding the portal...

> [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?]
>

waitaminute, is that all it takes?
where's the script?    (-;

lotsa responses to this one --

a) in the context of V., that is a relevant question.  Conversation in
V. seems to be not usually leading up to sex, wouldn't you say?
I mean, Roony confesses to Rachel, and although we don't get lengthy
transcripts, I bet they are pretty good conversations, but they don't
lead to any coitus for him with either Rachel or Paola.
Mafia's discourse, it might be argued, is an exception in one case...
But the conversation I'm thinking of is that of Godolphin and V., or
that of Stencil and his Margravine, or notably Benny whenever he
starts talking he starts thinking and becomes self-conscious and turns
away from sex...falls back on his own definition of himself...stands
on his lack of dignity or something...

b) what's that movie, Dark Star or something, with the line, "Oh
c'mon, don't tell me you've never fucked a robot?"

c) thinking of the difficulties in initiating sex, reminiscing back to
a time when I was in a very friendly workgroup and had broken up with
the person I later married, and my work buddies, male and female, were
trying to get me to forget her and "move on" - they said to buy "What
Every Woman Wants" I think, or some title like that, and do the
exercises in it - you're supposed to put a grape in your mouth and
fondle it with your tongue...I did that, and also learned to tie a
cherry stem in a knot with my tongue...none of it helped...Vicky was
one of the crew there (in the AT&T documents library where we spent
whole shifts printing out requests from the legal team for pages from
the 100 million page doc library on reader-printers, while the
divestiture case was being argued before Judge Green, and all lost our
jobs, which were temp jobs anyway, when they finally settled the case
in the fall of 1981 and broke up AT&T but just like Terminator 2 it
has re-coalesced) and she made everybody read _Clan of the Cave Bear_
by Jean Auel, and talked about how there was this one guy, Broud, who
just didn't get it and resorted to rape, and the Neanderthal women
wondered why: "why didn't he just give the signal and she would have
assumed the position"

--- what is that signal again, is what I asked...

but anyway, what is the appeal of robots to guys? I would have to say,
"some guys" because my other buddy Mike one time worked at a porn shop
and he was telling me about dudes who came in and bought those
inflatable dolls and we both kind of shook our heads...


> 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.
>

it does seem like a major theme in V., building on the distinction
between animate and inanimate.  Several references to inanimate
fingernails scraping animate flesh - Benny refers to it, and doesn't
Fausto get some kicks that way too? -- some parts of the living are
already non-living!

in fact, you could build a case whereby the tendency for rough sex is
the driver for this --- what's that song, "Turn to Stone" (actually
there are a couple of them, aren't there?) --

the greed (radix malorum est cupiditas) that drives men like Foppl and
Vibe to accumulate inanimate objects extends into their sex life and
*literally* objectifies the objects of their lust?

> 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?
>

yeah, it's kind of hard to hate her after Chapter 11 - her end is so terrifying!