V2nd, C3

[Mark Kohut]

Laura writes:


It's interesting how little role V.(ictoria Wren) has in any of these vignettes, 
but particularly in this one.

This chapter is mostly about the (mostly absent) Stencil's exercise in immersing 
himself in a time and place to get a feel for V.'s origins, rather than in 
trying to imagine V.'s origins directly.  His method reminds me of a book that 
I've always enjoyed:  Time and Again, by Jack Finney (who also wrote Invasion of 
the Body Snatchers).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_Again_(novel)

The book's about time travel, but the method involves immersing oneself into the 
mentality of the time and place one wants to travel to (in this case, 1890s 
NYC), including wearing the clothes (something Stencil balks at).  Time travel 
as a purely cerebral pursuit (though Finney doesn't get into any abstractions 
about The Role of The Writer, or anything).  That's sort of what Stencil's doing 
here.  If he happens to run into V. or anyone who might be V. in the process, so 
much the better.
_________________________-

I cannot help but see Stencil as the writer, that is Pynchon in this fiction, 
immersing himself in history to get answers.....


Ian writes:


>I'll have to leave this hanging with Waldetar's secret about
>Baedeker's world: "the permanent residents are actually humans in
>disguise." That is, men become their inanimate devices.

Which underscores that Stencil's not so much interested in intrigue in 19th 
Century Egypt as he is in intrigue in Baedeker-land.  If V. is a "thing" as 
Stencil the elder's question implies, then Stencil needs to search for her 
origins in a place where inanimate people exist.  This section of the chapter 
has a particularly disturbing image of that sort of person - not just a flight 
of fancy about tourists treating the locals as inanimate props, but 
Bongo-Shaftsbury revealing himself - terrorizing a little girl in the process - 
as partially inanimate.  B-S (using his sidekick Goodfellow as the initial 
seducer) will ultimately recruit Victoria Wren into the spying 9and inanimate) 
life.  So Stencil's mentally stumbled into her origins as a thing in this 
section.

Laura

PS: May of Pynchon's quirky names leave me cold (Dewey Gland?  Bloody Chiclitz?  
Ick!) But Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury is probably my all-time favorite.  Sounds like a 
British colonialist aristocrat "going native."

-----Original Message-----
>From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jul 18, 2010 2:51 PM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: V2nd, C3
>
>Horrors! Now I've gone and left myself too little time again.
>
>A start into section IV, in which Victoria has no explicit role:
>
>Stencil as Waldetar is yet another foreigner in Egypt. The first
>matter of significance seems to be the train a la Foerster's car, it
>is an emblem of industrialization. It runs "on a different clock--its
>own, which no human could read." The inanimate structures of man's
>devising have taken on an impetus of their own. Men cannot stop the
>machine, or even determine its rate of travel--we serve our inanimate
>inventions.
>
>Regarding the story of Ptolemy Philopater, I cannot yet verify
>Waldetar's father's telling, but there is Biblical reference to some
>events that sound near enough:
>
>1.3.7.        Ptolemy IV Philopater. 3 Maccabees 2:25-30
>2:25  When he [Ptolemy IV Philopater] arrived in Egypt, he increased
>in his deeds of malice . . . 27  He proposed
>to inflict public disgrace upon the Jewish community, and he set up a
>stone on the tower in the courtyard with this
>inscription:  28  "None of those who do not sacrifice shall enter
>their sanctuaries, and all Jews shall be subjected
>to a registration involving poll tax and to the status of slaves.
>Those who object to this are to be taken by force
>and put to death;  29  those who are registered are also to be branded
>on their bodies by fire with the ivy-leaf
>symbol of Dionysus, and they shall also be reduced to their former
>limited status."  30  In order that he might not
>appear to be an enemy to all, he inscribed below: "But if any of them
>prefer to join those who have been initiated
>into the mysteries, they shall have equal citizenship with the
>Alexandrians." [RSV]
>(More at: http://www.uoregon.edu/~dfalk/courses/ejud/hellenism.htm)
>
>Waldetar strips the myth as best he can and rationalizes a practical
>interpretation, the salient point of which becomes, "The storm and
>earthquake have no mind. Soul cannot commend no-soul. Only God can."
>The relationship between besouled individuals, however, is beyond
>God's province: "they are under the influence either of Fortune, or of
>virtue. Fortune had saved the Jews in the Hippodrome."
>
>Waldetar thus separates the animate from the inanimate and regards
>each in the Hegelian manner to understand the roles of God and man in
>myth and miracle, and we, the Stencillian observers get this explicit
>insight into Waldetar: "Merely train's hardware for any casual
>onlooker, Waldetar in private life was exactly this mist of
>philosophy, imagination and continual worry over his several
>relationships--not only with God, but also with Nita, with their
>children, with his own history." An object to most, Waldetar has a
>subjectivity in which Stencil and we get to partake.
>
>I'll have to leave this hanging with Waldetar's secret about
>Baedeker's world: "the permanent residents are actually humans in
>disguise." That is, men become their inanimate devices.
>
>-- 
>"liber enim librum aperit."