V-2nd - 2: At the V-Note

[Michael Bailey]

 alice wellintown wrote:
> The scene reads like a writer's notebook. I suspect that P was not yet
> young enough to see that he was so much older then when he wrote this,
> I also hold with those, few, who view the jazz man here as less than
> positive--all crypric allusions aside. His keep cool but care simply
> doesn't sum up anything to this reader; more mantra stereotype cant.
>

if you allow me the luxury of pretending to see a scheme or main theme,
which is a furtherance of James Joyce's trying to awaken from the
nightmare of history,
and presents itself in the machinations of Stencil warping the
consequences of his diplomat bloodline
and Benny's trying to find a place in civilian life after the Navy...

then the place of the President or King (or Queen) in the demilitarized polis
(or, the small sector which is actively looking for another modus vivendi)
is taken by the musician (or artist, poet - unacknowledged legislator
and so forth)
- in fact, wasn't Lester Young called "Pres" and then there's Duke
Ellington and Count Basie -
so rather than looking to a commander in chief one reveres the jazz musician...

of course Sphere is imperfect, and the puncturing of attempts at
godlike adoration
is part of the accomodation to a different way of looking at life...

or something like that

> I don't think P does his best work too close to home. In fact, he
> needs to move his work away from himself to write great prose. V.'s
> sick crew scenes are too close to home.

that's an interesting notion...




-- 
Yippy dippy dippy,
Flippy zippy zippy,
Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!
- Thomas Pynchon ("'Zo Meatman's Gone AWOL")