V-2 - Chapter 9 - Drifting from scene to scene

[Robin Landseadel]

All through chapter nine, the "I" of the narrator shifts from scene to  
scene within the chapter. This drifting from consciousness to  
consciousness, while really effective and very atmospheric, is also  
very confusing. It suppose it has echoes of Joyce, but there's no need  
to rule out other influences in these collections of scenes. This is  
an aspect of Pynchon's writing that seduces me with its visionary feel  
and keeps drawing me back into his books. Again, while reading  
"Mondaugen's Story" I must ask "Whose consciousness is this anyway?"  
and can't help but recall this series of scenes/dreams from Gravity's  
Rainbow:

	. . . Rollo Groast believes in some link, so far undiscovered-
	some surviving cell-memory that will, retrocolonial, still
	respond to messages from the metropolitan brain. Messages
	that young Trefoil may not consciously know of. "It is part,"
	Rollo writes home to the elder Dr. Groast in Lancashire, in
	elaborate revenge for childhood tales of Jenny Greenteeth
	waiting out in the fens to drown him, "part of an old and
	clandestine drama for which the human body serves only as
	a set of very allusive, often cryptic programme-notes it's as if
	the body we can measure is a scrap of this programme found
	outside in the street, near a magnificent stone theatre we
	cannot enter. The convolutions of language denied us! the
	great Stage, even darker than Mr Tyrone Guthrie's
	accustomed murk .... Gilt and mirroring, red velvet, tier on tier
	of box seats all in shadows too, as somewhere down in that
	deep proscenium, deeper than geometries we know of, the
	voices utter secrets we are never told .... "

		-- Everything that comes out from CNS we have to file
	here, you see. It gets to be a damned nuisance after a while.
	Most of it's utterly useless. But you never know when they'll
	want something. Middle of the night, or during the worst part
	of an ultraviolet bombardment you know, it makes no
	difference to them back there.

		-- Do you ever get out much to ... well, up to the Outer
	Level?
		(A long pause in which the older operative stares quite
	openly, as several changes flow across her features-
	amusement, pity, concern until the younger one speaks
	again.) I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be--(Abruptly) I'm
	supposed to tell you, eventually, as part of the briefing.

		-- Tell me what?

		-- Just as I was told once. We hand it on, one generation
	to the next. (There is no piece of business plausible enough
	for her to find refuge in. We sense that this has not yet
	become routine for her. Out of decency now, she tries to
	speak quietly, if not gently.) We all go up to the Outer Level,
	young man. Some immediately, others not for a while. But
	sooner or later everyone out here has to go Epidermal. No
	exceptions.

		-- Has to-

		-- I'm sorry.

		-- But isn't it I thought it was only a-well, a level. A place
	you'd visit. Isn't it ?

		-- Outlandish scenery, oh yes so did I-unusual
	formations, a peep into the Outer Radiance. But it's all of us,
	you see. Millions of us, changed to interface, to horn, and no
	feeling, and silence.

		-- Oh, God. (A pause in which he tries to take it in-then,
	in panic, pushes it back:) No-how can you say that-you can't
	feel the memory? the tug ... we're in exile, we do have a
	home! (Silence from the other.) Back there! Not up at the
	interface. Back in the CNS!

		-- (Quietly) It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks.
	Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday,
	somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A
	messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment.
	But I tell you there is no such message, no such home-only
	the millions of last moments ... no more. Our history is an
	aggregate of last moments.

		She crosses the complex room dense with its supple
	hides, lemonrubbed teak, rising snarls of incense, bright
	optical hardware, faded Central Asian rugs in gold and
	scarlet, hanging open-ribbed wroughtironwork, a long, long
	downstage cross, eating an orange, section by acid section,
	as she goes . . .

	GR, 150/151P