V-2nd - Chapter 10: FLIP FLOP

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Straight lines and 90 degree angles are generally a sign of bad shit in Pynchon.  There are various references to 90 degree angles in V.  Having sex is "going horizontal," or "rotating 90 degrees," as Rachel describes having sex with Slab.  In Chapter 11, Fausto says "... the physical being-there of a bed or horizontal plane determines what we call love ..."  Do humans rotate 90 degrees to make love (or what we "call" love)?  Or is that what automatons do?  SHROUD (or is it SHOCK?) warns Benny that it's too late - humans are nearly automatons.

How did it happen (or more to the point, what is Pynchon afraid has happened)?  In this chapter, Mclintic starts obsessing about the nature of the electronic flip-flop circuit (used to create a strobe or pulsating effect between two states).  He plays with the words:  flip, as in go crazy, and flop, as in to rest.  During periods of war, we flip.  During peace, we flop.  Here's an image of war craziness, supplied to Benny by SHROUD: 

(p. 322):  "Thousands of Jewish corpses, stacked up like those poor [junkyard] car-bodies."  Corpses stacked horizontally: FLIP

Later, Stencil crams into the rush-hour subway:

(p. 330):  "Vertical corpses ..."  Corpses stacked vertically:  FLOP

The angle of 90 degrees is all [well, not really, all, but still ...] that separates war-time atrocities from the alienation of industrialized society?  The War gave us a taste for stacking bodies that's so ingrained in us, we can't resist it in peacetime.  Rotating the stack 90 degrees simulates love?  Peace?

Laura