V--2nd, half-way

[Robin Landseadel]

I guess I'll make a few comments now.

Terri/Alice pointed out one of the most important historical aspects  
of "Mondaugen's Story":

		Aircraft in Africa & Abraham Morris:

		Aircraft  as a new weapon system, were applied and tested by a  
number of
	Western states during the inter-war period. Aircraft proved the  
supreme weapon
	system in dealing with massed "feudal" armies. Our first case study  
is close to
	home. What become known as the Bondelswart Uprising occurred a brief  
three
	years after the end of the First World War; and immediately showed  
the value of
	a tactical air force to a still skeptical public.

		The Bondelswart tribe, located in modern Namibia, protested against  
a South
	African government decision not to concede certain land claims. A  
force was
	raised in May 1922, when the captain of the tribe refused to deliver  
a number of
	his followers who were allegedly guilty of misdemeanor and theft. The  
force
	initially comprised two field guns and one hundred mounted troops.  
This force
	surrounded and bombarded Haib, the Bondelswart stronghold, on 29 May.  
On
	30 May the settlement surrendered after their leader, Abraham Morris,  
together
	with approximately fifty followers had escaped through the cordon.  
Morris hoped to
	join Nicolaas Christiaan and his men, and make a stand in their  
ancient stronghold
	 - the Fish River Canyon. In an attempt to prevent the insurrection  
from spreading
	to the Richtersveld, an airstrip was prepared near Steinkopf and two  
aircraft
	dispatched to the area from Pretoria. On 2 June, one of these  
aircraft spotted
	smoke in a saucer in the mountains; and the Bondelswart were bombed and
	machine-gunned from the air. Some 20 were killed and more wounded: the
	survivors learned to hide by day and move at night. They ate their  
last donkey
	on 4 June and in a skirmish with ground troops on the same day,  
Morris was
	killed. What remained of his followers surrendered on 7 June. Over the
	following weeks, the two aircraft made intimidation flights over all  
the reserves
	around Keetmanshoop.

All of the center page of "V." is devoted to a conversation between  
Mondaugen and Weissman. Pynchon often looks at modern history as a  
series of calamities. The marriage of the will of Weissman with the  
technical skill of Mondaugen leads us directly to the V-2 and the  
blitz. But the unknown backstory of that historical calamity is von  
Trotha's systematic extermination of the Hereros and Bondelswart  
tribes, the out of town try-outs for the mass exterminations to follow.

I wondered why Against the Day stopped somewhere in the early  
Twenties. While Kit gets to try out dive-bombing for cheap thrills,  
Abraham Morris did the first real arial bombardment. Just like in  
Hiroshima/Nagasaki, as the people being blown to bits aren't White  
people, there were enough that were not concerned as to allow these  
events to pass.

I think that Terri/Alice and I are not so far apart as our on-line  
squabbles might lead one to believe. Terri's pointing out of specific  
types of story telling shared by American authors of Romance [there,  
I've said it, so sue me] and Pynchon is very much to the point. The  
scene painting, the language and vocabulary are clearly reminiscent of  
the sources that Terri cites.

I would still say that Pynchon is hyperaware of "Heart of Darkness" in  
this chapter, along with the bits of Hawthorne and Poe that Terri also  
points us to. But why the hyper-dramatic language? As I've been  
maintaining, there's a bit of a chicken/egg quandary here.  I say that  
a lot of what makes this chapter "The Horror, the horror . . ." has to  
do with Pynchon's awareness of the lineage of modern weapons of  
warfare, particularly arial bombardment. For a little while, Pynchon  
worked in a small department of Boeing devoted to such weapons. He  
left that job quickly and eventually went on to write a great big,  
often horrific book about the V-2.

But did Pynchon reach for Hawthorne's language because he was aware of  
the rather large part that Hawthorne plays in Pynchon family history?  
Pynchon often treats "History" like it's a coiled packet of energy,  
just waiting to unleash destruction. Consider the "time weapon" of  
AtD. In Mondaugen's Story, we see that energy of technological  
"progress" unfold and subsume a people. What language would be more  
appropriate for such a story than that of Hawthorne and Poe?

	"What better place for the keepers of seals and codes to convene?"

On Oct 18, 2010, at 12:30 AM, Clément Lévy wrote:

> Here, let me repost Robin's mail:
>
> All the Big Pynchon Novels in some way have something happening dead  
> center -- that is to say, at the exact mid-way point of the novel's  
> page count. In the case of "V.", my edition -- the Harper Perennial  
> Modern Classics edition -- there is a page count of 533, the half  
> way point should be somewhere in the general vicinity of page 266.
>
> Rather than make any comments now, I'll simply post the page as it  
> is laid out in my copy.
>
> Comments to follow.
>
> 		. . .There Weissmann, in full uniform, lunged at him from
> 	behind a stalagmite. "Upington!" he screamed.
> 		"Ah?" inquired Mondaugen, blinking.
> 		"You're a cool one. Professional traitors are always so cool."
> 	His mouth remaining open, Weissmann sniffed the air. "Oh, my.
> 	Don't we smell nice." His eyeglasses blazed.
> 		Mondaugen, still groggy and enveloped in a miasma of
> 	cologne, wanted only to sleep. He tried to push past the piqued
> 	lieutenant, who barred his path with the butt end of a sjambok.
> 		"Whom have you been in contact with at Upington?"
> 		"Upington."
> 		"It has to be, it's the nearest large town in the Union.
> 	You can't expect English operatives to give up the comforts of
> 	civilization. "
> 		"I don't know anyone in the Union."
> 		"Careful how you answer, Mondaugen."
> 		It finally came to him that Weissmann was talking about the
> 	sferic experiment. "It can't transmit," he yelled. "If you knew any-
> 	thing at all you'd see that immediately. It's for receiving only,
> 	stupid."
> 		Weissmann favored him with a smile. "You just convicted
> 	yourself. They send you instructions. I may not know electronics,
> 	but I can recognize the scrawlings of a bad cryptanalyst."
> 		"If you can do any better you're welcome," Mondaugen
> 	sighed. He told Weissmann about his whim, the "code."
> 		"You mean that?" abruptly almost childlike. "You'll let me
> 	see what you've received?"
> 	"You've obviously seen everything. But it'll put us that much
> 	closer to a solution."
> 		Quite soon he had Weissmann laughing shyly. "Oh. oh, I
> 	see. You're ingenious. Amazing. Ja. Stupid of me, you see. I do  
> apologize."
> 		Struck by an inspiration, Mondaugen whispered, "I'm moni-
> 	toring their little broadcasts."
> 		Weissmann frowned. ''That's what I just said."
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 	And the jury has determined to divide the prize
> 	between two writers – to Thomas Pynchon for his
> 	Gravity’s Rainbow.
>
> Le 18 oct. 10 à 07:52, Michael Bailey a écrit :
>
>>>> Yahoo erased robin's post about the dead center of P's books
>>>>
>>>> afternoon and it was gone from my gmail also.
>>>
>>
>> all your waste are belong to us...
>>
>> I mean, I had it open, doesn't that mean it was in my computer?  Who
>> could pull that back?
>>
>> Robin, would you please repost?
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	This is the MAIN deterrent upon which we have
	gathered our strength and all the others who say,
	“What the hell did that get?” – WE DON’T KNOW.
	We’ve got to perforce with all the loving boy…
	And as Miller once said in one of his great novels –
	what did the … that language is only necessary
	when communication is endangered.