V-2nd: Pondering Paola

[Michael Bailey]

all of this of course is pursuant to my overarching schema,
that the book is about demobilization, how the deadened senses of the
militarized awaken, but with some pain like frostbitten or simply
body-parts-fallen-asleep,
see, Benny at the very start is like, fresh out of the military, "Pore
Forlorn Civilian" and by the end is reading undergraduate poetry and
helping Stencil

and of course V. then, among all the other meanings, stands for
Victory, right?  like in Austin Powers, "the war's over, we won" time
to count up the costs, play taps, rebuild, so forth...and explore what
else people can do besides fight, nicht wahr?

so you get "no conspiracies, just random caries" (possibly the most
amenable way to approach all the bad crap going on, and an important
backdrop against which to see all the paranoia in GR), you get Keep
Cool But Care, you get the idea about colonialism (not fun!), you get
yo-yoing, not a lot of fun, but still enough better than the military
that our friend Pig flip-flops and goes AWOL to enjoy it, you get all
the cheese Danishes and world's laziest man stuff, but these people
are still alive, at least enough to enjoy a beverage and laugh up
their sleeves...

I'm telling you, in some ways this is actually my favorite Pynchon book.




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