V-2 - Chapter 9 - More voluptuous than fat

[Robin Landseadel]

On Oct 15, 2010, at 5:59 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> jesus h. christ, is this suggestively good....we could comment on it
> paragraph by paragraph in my estimation.
>
> But two suggestive remarks: Do we

Not You Mark! Say it isn't so!!!

> think that Homosexuality in early Pynchon
> is another metaphor, uh, a kind of real metaphor which might refute  
> myself-- for
> the unnatural?...

You mean another Wasteland?

And there's also that strange loathing I found in "À la Recherche du  
Temps Perdu" for Lesbians, as though this refusal to procreate was a  
sin against God, somehow more unnatural than Male bonding, esp. the  
Military kind.

Of course, 1922 ain't 2010, that's for sure.

But yeah, I smell incense and candles and Port and an old man in a  
dress, much too close.

Isn't the black hole in Gravity's Rainbow a Black Mass with an order  
of coprophilia on the side? Ain't flippin' the Catholic Mass upside  
down the essence of heresy?

There's the affect that derives out of local vocabulary to consider in  
this chapter, the "feel" of flowery language. Chapter nine is better  
written in a general way, the vocabulary  is the richest in the book  
so far. When speaking of "affect"  I'm thinking of great Queer refuges  
like classical music criticism. There is something decidedly "Queer"  
about Stencilizing and I seriously wonder how much of Freudian  
Psychoanalytic theory drives Pynchon's stories.

I mean Oedipa Maas, give me a freakin' break . . .

Think about how "Queer" works out in "The Crying of Lot 49," with "IA"  
--"I'm ready to finish the puzzle, Pat!" -- and Baby Igor playing Tony  
Curtis to Oedipa Maas' interpretation of  Marilyn Monroe.

> 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?

I think that as Pynchon grew into Gravity's Rainbow, heresy qua heresy  
became central, an underlying force in determining character and plot.  
In Mondaugen's Story, Pynchon is giving us his first wide-angle  
picture of the ongoing holocaust and the spiritual history of the  
Nazis. The linking story in Gravity's Rainbow -- "Pölker's Story" --  
echos the "Sarah" story in chapter nine.

> And at least often caused by our
> distorting society?

You mean like looking at gender in terms of models of cause and  
effect, not yet understanding that gender assignment is an innate  
quality independent of so-called moral fiber?

Yeah, you could say that.

Lot of us did, back in the day.