V-2nd - Chapter 10 drove the little Triumph to the party...

[alice wellintown]

...indeed, according to some, the single melody,  banal and
exasperating, for all Romanticism since  the Middle Ages:
"the act of love and the act of death are one."

V. 442

de Rougemont, Denis.  Love in the Western World.
   Trans. Montgomery Relgion.  Princeton, NJ:
   Princeton UP, 1956.

See Chapter 9, "The Love of Death" where the  meaning of the
sword is explained.  This sword, (note also the "red stain"
(LWW) that P in parody makes  the beer spilled in Chapter 10
part III

(beer, booze and **LWW intoxication** are also parodic
symbolism in V., the Crew worships
beer--Paola with the church key and the sack of 40s
clinking, -- note the red wine spilled all over the place at
crew parties, the ceremony where Profane is a corpse
intoxicated Born through the streets of NYC, very important
chapter) spilled on rug in the shape of Tristan's sword,
shows up in the chapter in which various young
people [don't quite] get together, 10, III. Mafia asks Benny
if he is gay, since he  rebuffs her  advances after nearly giving her the
much needed adultery she seeks.

Also, Fina says she is cherry--Virgin, and she tries to get
Benny's sword in the bath. His response is very important. First, he
questions his own astonishment at making the Catholic
argument, but he goes on to make it.  He tells her to remain
a Virgin, save it for her groom. Next, he alludes to Mary and
the Annunciation, the Incarnation, it is, as the dates go,
around March 25th I suspect. And then he argues the
**Books** at her. This is funny stuff. But I think there is
a tragedy in the comedy.  Remember that this chapter (6, I)
opens with a statement about  Benny's  misunderstanding what
is actually going on with Fina, Joan of Arc, St. Fina and
himself.  He figures that "he was only the disembodied
object of a corporal work of mercy...another means to grace
or indulgence for Fina.

Why doesn't Benny have sex with Mafia?
Why doesn't he have sex with Fina?
Why doesn't he have sex with Paola?
Why does he have sex with Rachel?

Dear Prudence, Why don't he do it in the road?


On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 10:31 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> After the flip flop clock crazy cornell car bodies and "What for
> Christ's sake?" we return to Slab; the sentence begins with "While"
> and ends as a fragment. Then, a series of // paragraphs.
>
> And Charisma, Fu, and Pig Bodine
>
> And Rachel and Roony
>
> And Stencil sat dour
>
> And Mafia Winsome
>
> And who knew where Paola was?
>
> These remind us of Hemingway and Eliot. The And // structure, the
> curling of images, the useless words of newspaper scraps are echoes of
> Eliot's Preludes again.
>
> http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/eliot_preludes.html
>
> On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 6:04 AM, alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> V. is a remarkable book. I like it.  P-the-younger is an impressive
>> author and, obviously, works his ass off to produce a great first
>> novel. It's a fun book, even after 40 plus years. What's not that
>> impressive is the style, the diction, the syntax, the grammar, the
>> sentences, the dialogue, is often flat and lumpy, not the the prose we
>> find in the works P writes later on. I think P writes better when he
>> follows Hawthorne's advice (given in those famous prefaces and the
>> custom house chapter) and gets what Hawthorne calls the "atmospherical
>> medium" working on an historisized moral message that aims at the
>> truth of the human heart. He does this in Mondaugen and it works. He
>> tries it in TSI with mixed results. Sphere is a mixed bag. He not
>> post-war cool, he does care about the people he sees suffering in
>> their relationships and he sufferes. He reminds us that Pynchon is
>> never far from Christ.
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 8:00 PM, Michael Bailey
>> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Robin Landseadel wrote:
>>>> alice wellintown wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> one thing that strikes me in Chapter 10 is at that party where the
>>> girl takes Sphere's eye.  "Give me back my eye," he says.  This seems
>>> at first to be an interruption of uncontrollable, almost
>>> unconscionable levity on the author's part.
>>>
>>> But then Sphere turns down a tryst, goes running back to Ruby, and
>>> before that, Sphere's buddy remarks on him having eyes for the
>>> kitchen, or something like that - so one gets a picture of somebody
>>> being turned on, noticeably, and resisting it, for a reason.  And it
>>> also refers back to Shakespeare, "tell me where is fancy bred?"
>>>
>>> I have this harmless contrarian theory that V. is actually pretty cool...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> "Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respects a
>>> violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural
>>> liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the
>>> whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all
>>> governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical." -
>>> Adam Smith
>>>
>>
>