V2nd chapter 9 Kalkfontein

[Robin Landseadel]

On Oct 14, 2010, at 2:13 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> Kurt's ability to experience other people's dreams/memories is  
> shared by Pirate Prentice in GR, although Pirate's a true psychic.   
> Another sign that Pynchon dug deep into V. when he was writing GR.   
> Kurt seems to be helped along by his sferics antennae.  He tells  
> Weissmann he can only receive, not transmit.  Weissmann thinks the  
> messages come from Them, but Kurt's actually receiving messages from  
> ghosts - the ghosts contained in Foppl's memory of the 1904  
> Genocide.  The Bondelswaartz are right about the antennae being  
> associated with ghosts.
>
> Laura

What Kurt experiences, deep in the fever dreams of scurvy, is a  
defective—Stencilized? Fabulized? Extrapolated into the realm of  
imaginary numbers?— deef, is a d-d-d deform—defective form of time  
travel. Those familiar with fever dreams are familiar with the wall  
blocking full access into Jung's world of the archetypes breaking down  
in the sweats and terrors. Of course the scale of the extermination of  
the Herero people seems like imaginary numbers, though Pynchon/Stencil  
puts it all in perspective:

	"This is only 1 percent of six million, but still pretty good."

For the uninitiated, this is what is known as "Sick Humor," a post- 
beat sub genre of the comedic scene that flourished in the same era as  
"Theater of Cruelty" and animated cartoons of a decidedly satyrical  
bent. The level of raw cruelty in this little seance is as great as  
anything Pynchon has written. Open wounds and rotten flesh everywhere.

At the same time chapter Nine of "V." proved to be the perfect set-up  
for a sequel.


On Oct 14, 2010, at 8:53 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> And, obvious again maybe, that clock, motif from early, that  
> Cartesian notion of
> a clockwork
> world/universe..........it will be 'reforged and rehung"..............

Isn't there a line about "the gaudy clockwork of the doomed" in CoL 49  
concerning the Scurvahmites?

	"The artist is anonymous," Bortz said, "so is the poetaster who  
rewrote the play.
	Here Pasquale, remember, one of the bad guys? actually does marry his  
mother,
	and there's a whole scene on their wedding night." He changed slides.  
"You get the
	general idea, notice how often the figure of Death hovers in the  
background. The
	moral rage, it's a throwback, it's mediaeval.* No Puritan ever got  
that violent. Except
	possibly the Scurvhamites. D'Amico thinks this edition was a  
Scurvhamite project."
	"Scurvhamite?"

	Robert Scurvham had founded, during the reign of Charles I, a sect of  
most pure
	Puritans. Their central hangup had to do with predestination. There  
were two kinds.
	Nothing for a Scurvhamite ever happened by accident, Creation was a  
vast,
	intricate machine. But one part of it, the Scurvhamite part, ran off  
the will of God, its
	prime mover. The rest ran off some opposite Principle, something  
blind, soulless; a
	brute automatism that led to eternal death. The idea was to woo  
converts into the
	Godly and purposeful sodality of the Scurvhamite. But somehow those  
few saved
	Scurvhamites found themselves looking out into the gaudy clockwork of  
the
	doomed with a certain sick and fascinated horror, and this was to  
prove fatal. One
	by one the glamorous prospect of annihilation coaxed them over, until  
there was no
	one left in the sect, not even Robert Scurvham, who, like a ship's  
master, had been
	last to go.

Ah yes, good old fashioned righteous indignation over outrageous  
immoral behavior is usually the first thing to go. It's very clear  
that Pynchon is offering up the worst of World War II time tunneled  
into 1904. This makes me want to jump into "Against the Day" one more  
time, just to find the analogous passages. Of course, these  
Scurvhamite folks are sold on suicide, seems like the Herero are too.  
Sloth extrapolated into death-longing.


*Unless you're Terri, then it's simply Romantic.