V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids

[Mark Kohut]

A---and, what is the ironic poignance, if that is an accurate phrase,
of Fausto, once on the way to priesthood, who never made it, giving
Last  Rites--which only Priests can do---to  V. as a man who is a Bad Priest? 

Fausto's compassion, yet cowardice, reminded me a little of a Graham Greene
character,always a Bad Catholic. such as in Power & the Glory where the Bad 
Priest
acts compassionately despite his Badness,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Fausto still equals Catholicism losing its Faith, becoming closer to inanimate 
then getting
some kind of New faithless Faith back....
Faith in telling the truth of his story for Paola's (secular) salvation? 


----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: kelber at mindspring.com
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, December 5, 2010 7:19:53 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids

I have read the scene again and am reminded I thought of 
"Lord of the Flies" to some extent....kids going evil with some glee...
or High Wind in Jamaica or the story in "Mad Dog" Russell's autobiography
when he and his wife were running a kind of free school----and he learned of
one kid putting a pin into another's soup..........................

the Crucifixion is actually alluded to: "suffering Christ foreshortened
on the bare skull".......p343

And, as Catholicism pervades Malta and this book it is moving that
P seems to give her a 'good death' in theology; "saying she actually feared 
losing
Him" more than she feared dying..which is what we Catholics were always told
about proper repentance...........................


----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: kelber at mindspring.com
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, December 5, 2010 12:44:10 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids

laura writes:
The scene where the Maltese kids set upon the dying V., laugh at her and 
dismember her, well, it's kind of disturbing, no?  I have a mental block against 


anything Biblical, but the scene's clearly got some Christian overtones.  Does 
it relate to a specific scene in the New Testament, anyone?


Don't know those other wonderful associative allusions you bring, so I only 
thought of 

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.---that classic 1948 New Yorker story that 
resulted in the most subscription cancellations
to that date, I think..................

With its roots in a community's "need" to scapegoat, as (some) anthropologist's 
have argued ?  

Leading again to your, Laura's, question about how much victim, how much 
enactor, of bad shit is V.?