V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case

[Mark Kohut]

Malta is where V., when She was the meaning of history, lived, so to speak?

It is where She is still more human than inanimate?


----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, November 16, 2010 11:27:55 AM
Subject: Re: V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case

Looking ahead to events later in the chapter:

Natural, to Fausto: the rock that is Malta, children, the Maltese language that 
doesn't lend itself to abstract thinking.

Unnatural to Fausto:  bombs, Spitfires, V.

The coordinate system on which he lays out his room seems to be part of the 
aftermath of the War and his encounter with V.

Fausto's confessing to the Good Priest(as embodied in his daughter, who springs 
from the rock of Malta, the feminine, the goddess).  V.'s a woman who's been 
completely vanquished by the technological, the Bad, which has turned her into 
the Bad Priest.  Has Fausto made a deal with the Bad Priest in taking her 
confession?

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>

>
>"It takes no more than a desk and writing supplies to turn any room into a 
>confessional."
>
>So, what is he confessing? is this another Henry Adams-like autobiographical 
>confession by one 
>Fausto?
>
>Fausto.....gonna get to the actual Faust allusion soon, meanwhile,,,,,
>
>The room is inert. p. 325 "The facts call up emotional responses, which no inert 
>
>room has ever showed us."
>
>Unlike that lived-in, loved-in room in CofL49 which "knew"...
>
>An inanimate room, so to allude?...If this is an extended portrait of a writer 
>metaphor, then the writer
>inhabits a carpetless, unadorned room.....death-like to write??
>
>Anyone want to gloss the way it is described via all those coordinate 
>directions? 
>
>
>