V-2 - Chapter 9 - More voluptuous than fat

[Mark Kohut]

jesus h. christ, is this suggestively good....we could comment on it
paragraph by paragraph in my estimation.

But two suggestive remarks: Do we think that Homosexuality in early Pynchon
is another metaphor, uh, a kind of real metaphor which might refute myself-- for 
the unnatural?...That his belief/hope that nature is, at base,
a value worth believing in, here in V. he shared The [Catholic] Church's belief 
that Gayness was against natural law?  And at least often caused by our
distorting society? 


----- Original Message ----
From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Fri, October 15, 2010 8:44:20 AM
Subject: V-2 - Chapter 9 - More voluptuous than fat

    . . . More voluptuous than fat, with fair hair, long eyelashes and a shy 
smile that enchanted older women . . .

On Oct 13, 2010, at 11:46 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> Are you a man or a fish? The Tempest tossed on Poe's Red Masque.

    But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. . .

    . . . It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade.

http://www.enotes.com/masque-red-death-text/the-masque-of-the-red-death

    Modern readers will be, at least, put off by an unacceptable level of 
racist, sexist and
    proto-Fascist talk throughout this story. I wish I could say that this is 
only Pig Bodine's
    voice, but, sad to say, it was also my own at the time. The best I can say 
for it now is     

    that, for its time, it is probably authentic enough. John Kennedy's role 
model James
    Bond was about to make his name by kicking third-world people around, 
another
    extension of the boy's adventure tales a lot of us grew up reading. There 
had prevailed
    for a while a set of assumptions and distinctions, unvoiced and 
unquestioned, best
    captured years later in the '70's television character Archie Bunker.

    It may yet turn out that racial differences are not as basic as questions of 
money and
    power, but have served a useful purpose, often in the interest of those who 
deplore
    them most, in keeping us divided and so relatively poor and powerless. This 
having
    been said, however, the narrative voice in this story here remains that of a 
smart-assed
    jerk who didn't know any better, and I apologize for it.
    SL

There are certain forms of homophobia that appear in early Pynchon. Some Rubicon 
gets crossed in Gravity's Rainbow, some broadening of acceptance of gender 
difference. But in all of "V." Queer is "Other", it's consistently portrayed as 
diseased, though it's only fair to note that all sexual liaisons in chapter nine 
are profoundly dis-eased.  Again, "Against the Day" takes many of the ideas 
expressed in "V." and flips them, in the process further humanizing his 
characters. Cyprian Latewood may be the most sympathetic of all of Pynchon's 
cartoons, he's certainly one of the Queerest.

Pynchon really did develop a much greater ability to round out characters as he 
grew up. They may still be cartoons, but they are far more interesting cartoons. 
In the context of "V.", Kurt does show signs of life. In comparison to the other 
characters we have encountered so far in "V.", Kurt and his Sick Crew stand out 
in bold relief. He really isn't an actor, he's more of a listener. Laura made an 
excellent point about Kurt being a person with psychic gifts who follows a 
different life path than -- say --  Pirate Prentice. Certainly, being a young 
engineer making a living by listening to strange new sounds sounds like 
interesting work. And I imagine that the young author with the engineer's mind 
was listening to plenty of Spheric sounds at the time, like Ornette and Monk and 
who knows, maybe even Sun Ra.

Consider Proust's portraits of the decky-dance in the context of Moundagen's 
story. Proust's long, long, long novel unfolds in extended conversations from 
great and nobel figures in French Society, including figures in the military 
establishment, characters that everyone knows are Queer, everyone plays along, 
everyone living in a closed, luxurious, perfumed & isolated society. It's DADT, 
always was, least since the Roman party was shut down. I also detect the scent 
of Buddenbrooks as well as floral notes from Bill Burroughs. I haven't read 
anything by the two Henry's yet, but the excerpts I've absorbed have a similar 
language, a similar woeful awareness that "time is passing, our order is 
declining."

In Pynchon's Paranoid Decky-Dance perversions are best served jumbled up, he's a 
bit of a maximalist in most regards anyway, a Post-Bop Hieronymus Bosch.

    . . . Two things made Foppl's a fortunate place to be carrying on sferic
    research. First, the farmer had given Mondaugen a room to himself in a 
turret
    at one corner of the house; a little enclave of scientific endeavor, 
buffered by
    number of empty storage rooms and with access to the roof through a
    stained-glass window portraying an early Christian martyr being devoured by
    wild beasts.

Again, Terri is right about the quality of the scene-painting in this chapter 
being derived from Poe's Masque of the Red Death":

    The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that
    hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a
    carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of 
the
    windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were
    scarlet—a deep blood color.

Foppl's name is obviously derived from "Fop", the chapter goes to some effort to 
represent Weissman and Foppl as Iconographic Drag Queens, with Masquerades 
requiring more than the usual amount of attention granted to eye liner issues. 
The moral black hole of "V." is Queer at the center.

This essential Queerness as Perversion is underlined in Kurt's first meeting 
with "V.", "V." in this case being "Vera Meroving, her companion a Lieutenant 
Weissmann, her city Munich."

Munich's a code words, see -- like catsup.

    . . . Psychoanalytic literature also recognizes the paranoid personality.
    Following Freud's formulation, largely based on the Schreber case,
    analytical writers have related paranoid tendencies to the repudiation of
    latent homosexuality through projection as the common denominator of
    this disorder (Ahktar, 1990). Others, like Frosch (19850 contend that the
    common denominator may be humiliating at the hands of significant others
    of the same sex, which engender in the patient a feeling of having been a
    helpless victim.

http://tinyurl.com/2dt8wot

Kurt's a bit of a voyeur, and his his initial glimpse of "V." is quite  
voyeuristic:

    Soon, padding down a narrow, sloping corridor, he was brought to attention
    by a mirror hung some twenty feet ahead, angled to reflect the interior of a
    room around the next corner.  Framed for him there were Vera Meroving and
    her lieutenant in profile, she striking at his chest with what appeared to 
be a
    small riding crop, he twisting a gloved hand into her hair and talking to 
her all
    the while, so precisely that the voyeur Mondaugen could lip-read each
    obscenity. The geometry of the corridors somehow baffled all sound:
    Mondaugen, with the queer excitement he'd felt watching her at her window
    that morning, expected captions explaining it all to flash on to the mirror. 
But
    she finally released Weissmann; he reached out with the curiously gloved
    hand and closed the door, and it was as if Mondaugen had dreamed them. . .

Flash Forward:

    Kurt Mondaugen found Pölker lying on her cot breathing what he imagined were 
odors
    of her hair on the pillow. For a while then he went a little insane, talked 
of killing
    Weissmann, sabotaging the rocket program, quitting his job and seeking 
asylum in
    England .... Mondaugen sat, and listened to all of it, touched Pölker once 
or twice,
    smoked his pipe, till at last, at two or three in the morning, Pölker had 
talked through a
    number of unreal options, cried, cursed, punched a hole into his neighbor's 
cubicle,
    through which he heard the man snoring on oblivious. Cooled by then to a 
vexed
    engineer-elitism -- "They are fools, they don't even know what sine and 
cosine are and
    they're trying to tell me"-he agreed that yes, he must wait, and let them do 
what they
    would do ....

    "If I set up a meeting with Weissmann," Mondaugen did suggest, "could you be
    graceful? calm?"

    "No. Not with him .... Not yet."

    "When you think you are ready, let me know. When you're ready, you'll know 
how to     

    handle it." Had he allowed himself a tone of command? He must have seen how 
much
    Pölker needed to be at someone's command. Leni had learned to subdue her
    husband with her face, knew what cruel lines he expected of her mouth" what 
tones of
    voice he needed ... when she left him she left an unemployed servant who'd 
go with
    the first master that called, just a

            VICTIM IN A VACUUM!

        Nur ... ein ... Op-fer!
        Sehr ins Vakuum,

    ("Won't somebody take advantage of me?")
        Wird niemand ausnut-zen mich, auch?
    ("Just a slave with nobody to slave for,")
        Nur ein Sldave, ohne Her-rin, (ya-ta ta-ta)
    ("A-and who th' heck wants ta be, free?")
        Wer zum Teufel die Freiheit, braucht?

    (All together now, all you masochists out there, specially those of you 
don't have a     

    partner tonight, alone with those fantasies that don't look like they'll 
ever come true-
    won't you just to join in here with your brothers and sisters, let each 
other know you're
    alive and sincere, try to break through the silences, try to reach through 
and connect .... )

    Aw, the sodium lights-aren't, so bright in Berlin,
    I go to the bars dear, but nobody's in!
    Oh, I'd much rather bee
    In a Greek trage-dee,
    Than be a VICTIM IN A VACUUM to-nite!

A bit of the history of Nazi prosecution of Homosexuals within the S.S.:

http://tinyurl.com/278xd38
=====================================

    Now Gravity’s Rainbow is a token of this
    man’s genius…he told me so himself…
    that he could…in other words, have been
    more specific, but rather than to allude
    the mundane, he has come to the
    conclusion that brevity is the importance
    of our shallow existence.
    
    God damn.