V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids

[alice wellintown]

> According to some myths, Orpheus notably met this fate at the hands of
> the Thracian women. Interpreting the ritual through the lens of the
> Freudian Oedipus complex, Catherine Maxwell identifies sparagmos as a
> form of castration, particularly in the case of Orpheus.[1]

In some stories of Osiris, after being scattered,   he is put back
together without his penis. His penis is swallowed by a fish.

>From Ruby (in the film the slippers are Ruby), Ruby in disguises with
diamonds, as a sistah angel in Harlem, a prosittute, a whore, a nun or
sister, to Silver shoes (in the Oz books) to Gold, follow the brick to
Silver and Gold to Henry Adams. Why must the Bad Priest be a young
woman? Not old, but young. No need of parts inanimate, but a need to
make over what God had made in his own image in the imah=ge of what
Man has made sacred. Of course, woman was not made from God but from
Adam's rib.

Round and round we go, not detectives, spies maybe, that's how Henry
thinks of himself, how he imagines others see him, as a spy, as a
Slothful spy, once he chooses his Profession and loses his
Religion---becomes a writer.



 "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly;
so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of
the earth" (Matthew 12:40)    (GR.480).

I am reminded of Albert Pinkham Ryder's Jonah for some reason, perhaps
because he also painted The Flying
Dutchman and like Ryder's oils, these chapters are blurred and
obscure,  but this "face of Jonah" is not much,
certainly not as interesting as Melville's, I mean Mapple's sermon.
Chapter 9 of Moby-Dick,indeed all of Moby-Dick and
Confidence Man must have crossed Pynchon's mind at some point while he
was pulling all these
ships and boats off his book shelf.

"Under that cheerful mask is the face of Jonah."  "You mean, uh, the,
uh--" "I mean Margherita."  GR.480

What was Slothrop going to say? You mean, uh, the girl, Bianca?  Was
Stefiana watching too"

Margherita?  "Looks like German movies have warped other outlooks
around here too."

"You mean Margherita's." GR.474

Margherita's, perhaps all aboard the Anubis (civilization). We could
look at the Toiletship as the mind and the Anubis
as civilization.

Later, GR.501, "Barracks have had their roofs blown away: spinal and
ribwise and sunwhite the bones of these creatures
that must have held in their time half the Jonahs of falling Europe.

So what does she mean by the face of Jonah?

My guess is she means that Slothrop is not really a party animal like
the  others, or he is simply the bad luck guy
here, the guy  that draws the lot, the guy God or other forces of
great wrath are after and that may not be the best
thing for the rest of the mariners aboard the Anubis.

As Jonah could not escape  by sailing away, neither can Slothrop
escape, and perhaps like Jonah,  Slothrop is simply
directed and his actions will not produce the outcome he desires.

 Slothrop is now cycled over to ant-paranoia. Nothing is connected, he
is numb, he ought to be alarmed,
but he can't, as Orpheus (Orpheus torn to pieces, Dionysus rituals,
also Lycidas, "Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian
shore) he has sex with Bianca (his Eurydice in mock form--she is lost)
and  he is lost in the belly of the beast
of his solopsistic mindless pleasures as the zone moves entropically
in all directions at once.

In some stories of Osiris, after being scattered   he is put back
together without his penis. His penis is swallowed by a
fish.

The voyage on the Anubis is a progressive knotting into the evil
predicament. The folks aboard do not, as Jonah's fellow
sailors do, toss things off the boat to make it more sea worthy, they
don't cast Slothrop into the sea, into the deep, into god's fish, no,
they "throw everything of value over the side" (GR.668) letting the
only one that can see, the winged jackal, guide them.  This
"degenerate company" that Slothrop has fallen in with cannot remember
their own dreams, not because they have journeyed with Dante aboard
one of the boats following his bark through Purgatory, but because
they are caught in a perpetual limbo.