V-2nd - Chapter 10: Partridge in a Pear tree

[Mark Kohut]

foreshadowing of THE later impaling?

And, as P. does here and elsewhere--I'm remembering Against the Day--I think he 
is doing some "art criticism", so to speak...Art that includes writing although
this example is pictorial.....

Art that does not contain real nature, that does not embody some kind of nature, 
that is an inanimate machine that feeds off itself...................
is NOT art that lasts..............


----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, November 2, 2010 6:33:59 PM
Subject: V-2nd - Chapter 10:  Partridge in a Pear tree

Earlier on, I'd said in a post that Pynchon's later reverence for Nature isn't 
so evident in V.  Well, here's evidence to the contrary.  


In former Catatonic Expressionist Slab's latest painting, Cheese Danish No. 35, 
Slab thinks he's portrayed a perpetual motion machine:  a partridge in a pear 
tree.  "The partridge eats pears off the tree, and his droppings in turn nourish 
the tree which grows higher and higher, every day lifting the partridge up and 
at the same time assuring him a continuous supply of food."  It's a fully 
animate machine.  The problem for this machine isn't entropy, however, it's The 
Inanimate, specifically the man-made inanimate.  Slab's added a pointy-toothed 
gargoyle on which the partridge will inevitably be impaled, but he says it could 
just as well be a telephone wire an airplane or any other man-made object.

Obviously, Pynchon's having a laugh at Slab's expense - he doesn't understand 
entropy.  But there's still a hint of the romantic view of Nature as beautiful 
and self-renewing, until Man comes in and ruins everything.  No hint that 
Nature, via entropy or its own evils - lightening bolts, forest fires, soil 
erosion, mortality, is its own worst enemy.

This chapter is a treasure trove of the clash between the animate and the 
inanimate, and the frighteningly thin line (if any) between the two.  The 
Partridge is just the first of many puzzles Pynchon (via Benny) works through in 
this chapter.

Laura