V-2nd - 2: Owlglass and Schoenmaker

[kelber at mindspring.com]

In our first meeting with Rachel, we learned that she was a spoiled Jewish rich girl (what's unhappily known as a JAP) who was so enamored of her flashy car that she was (apparently) having sex with it.

In Chapter 2, our first glance of Rachel again ties her to the inanimate:

"Her high heels hit precise and neat each time on the X's of the grating in the middle of the mall."

Kind of robot-like, no?

Compare her to Paola, later in the chapter.  Paola leaves Rachel a note consisting of a list of proper nouns, in lieu of a party invitation.  Rachel thinks:

"Nothing but proper nouns.  The girl lived proper nouns.  Persons, places.  No things.  Had anyone told her about things?"

But there's more to Rachel.  When we join her at Schoenmaker's, she's got depth:  intellect, compassion, principles.  Leaving aside her musings about mirrors in the waiting room for now, her argument with Schoenmaker runs counter to the previous Rachel-as-robotic view.  She's opposed to nose jobs (though her compassionate nature leads her to support Esther's decision), and she has no qualms about confronting Schoenmaker.

The name Schoenmaker is pretty heavy-handed for a plastic surgeon, but whence the name Shale?  Pynchon making a joke about the heavy-handedness of his other name?  It's neither a German nor Jewish name.  Does it imply that Schoenmaker's medium isn't flesh, but stone?  Does his work last forever?

Meanwhile, Schoenmaker's making the opposite argument to Rachel.  His work, he says, is only skin deep.  It has no lasting effects on the genome (or germ plasm, as 1963 Pynchon calls it).

Rachel, in contrast to that object-loving side we've seen of her, argues for the psychological, the metaphysical.  Schoenmaker changes people inside, she argues.  He passes on an attitude outside the germ plasm.  She's just been contemplating the worlds inside and outside of the mirror in the waiting room, and so struggles with the metaphor.  Schoenmaker notes this, and tries to dismiss her view:  "Inside, outside ... you're being inconsistent, you lose me."

Rachel comes across as a warm, passionate, living thing here.  Think of the name Owl-glass:  living/inanimate, soft/hard, warm/cold.  Maybe she comes across as rigid on the outside, but inside is a feeling, emotional human being - the opposite of a clockwork orange.  She's aware of the lure of the inanimate, but she's fighting it tooth and nail.  That's why Benny likes her.  In fact, she's fighting against the determinism of her upbringing.  Nice Jewish girls are supposed to get a smattering of education so that they can converse with the nice Jewish Good Providers it's their mission to snare. Rachel's hanging out with the Whole Sick Crew instead.  Not one doctor or dentist in the bunch.

Laura