V-2nd - Chapter 8 - Section IV - Stencil's soliloquy

[Michael Bailey]

...got the timeline wrong, have to really misstate things to make the
Pentecost notion from my previous post work:

>From the non-sectarian Rusty Spoon communion, on the alarm raised in
the faith-based community of saloons, bars and public houses, by
Ben-Gurion's speech April 15th, Pig and Charisma bring (still
Pentecostally - hey, the very name "Charisma" conjures such a notion)
"a little bit of that gathering-place" ecumenically to the noted
Prayer Warriors Roony and Mafia, they gather in the name of the Lord
and celebrate the host (and Roony is a pretty good host) and 4 days
later their efforts, and those of the other Baedeker postulants
(because what is the Rusty Spoon if not a Baedeker outpost, too high
class for Profane, a place with secluded wings for colonists like
Mondaugen and Godolphin pere to confess - you could almost impute a
slowly spinning ceiling fan and place the conversation in Raffles...)
around the wide world inspire a conciliatory mood leading to the
ceasefire...healing the sin-sick world's wounds by their partying


This is not only countertextual, but counterfactual: the Suez crisis
was just beginning by April 15th.


Paragraph leading into Stencil's soliloquy:
the ceasefire between Israel and Egypt melds in the public mind with
the merger of Prince Rainier III of Monaco and Grace Kelly
(rapprochement of New World and Old World and also reflects Mafia's
statement on the previous page that "Aristocracy is in the soul.") and
whatever other news they choose to read.

The narrator notes that the perception of these events in any given
individual's mind is subjective.  Interestingly, he seems to deplore
this, calling the version of history liable to be held by an
individual a "rathouse built of history's rags and straws."

The implicit comparison is that there is, or ought to be, a (Marxist?
Christian?) version of history more cathedral-like, more like the
"Schein-Aula" described in GR.  This foreshadows even more explicit
commentary on history in M&D.

How would a more impressive version of history NOT comparable to a
rathouse arise identically across a population?  Compulsory schooling?
 2-way TVs like in 1984, all tuned to the History Channel? (How about
a succession of reasonable and life-fostering actions by governments,
pleasant to consider?)

There are around 5 million rathouses in Nueva York, and one of them is
Stencil's.  But before we focus in on this one, let us consider the
heads of state - in the words of the 1984 preface, IIRC (*nope, SL
preface*), "the succession of the criminally insane...with the power
to do something about it"

As long as we are getting quantitative, consider a normal distribution
of types (it's implicit that the type of person will determine the
type of rathouse, and thus the type of action) -

first of all, we delineate the subset "cabinet ministers, heads of
state and civil servants in the capitals of the world"

then we speculate that that sampling might contain a normal
distribution of types,  that the people controlling the levers of
power are in fact ordinary people, "he came out of a quim just like
you" (GR) -- that at least in the matter of Weltanschauung, there is
no difference between the distribution of types found in the subset,
and that found in the general population.

This notion is proved by looking at the events they bring into being.
Rather tough to sustain the Great Man notion of history, reasoning
back from their fruits...

Is that the point here? (maybe)  Or am I prone to dubious
interpretations?  (yes)

Or let's say the narrator in this pre-soliloquy passage is not "pure
narrator" but is instead (in Deleuze-Guattari terms)
"becoming-Stencil"

Perhaps "becoming-Stencil"'s rejection of any special election among
politicos explains Stencil's rejection of the diplomatic career, eh?
And the fact that, among his father's diaries, the one thing he
chooses to investigate is V., the thing (person, place) which his
father hopes not to have to explain, specifically "not in any
professional capacity"

  What if the courtly tradition is true, the female *is* holy, and
when the imperialist invokes divine mandate for his depredations, he
misstates God's (ie, the female's) intentions, confuses her and
commits her to a tragictory like V.'s?














-- 
- But you can wade in the water
and never get wet
if you keep on doin' that rag (Grateful Dead, "Doin' That Rag")