V-2 - Chapter 9 - Natural Concentration Camps

[Robin Landseadel]

	. . . The barren islets off Ltideritzbucht were natural concentration  
camps . . .

On Oct 28, 2010, at 5:50 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Robin Landseadel wrote:
>
>> Sarah is introduced to Foppl in this scene. I guess it's Foppl that  
>> doing
>> the fucker/fuckee twist, but I'm not really sure, seeing as he  
>> refers to
>> himself as "Himself," further confusing the narrator's voice with  
>> Stencil's.
>
> yes, true, he's recounting or confessing this to Eigenvalue.
> And I suppose it's not necessary to stress the idea that according to
> his old roommate, the author was a frequent confessor himself, but
> it's the kind of thing I like to do...

You Catholic?

> the idea that some of the urgent propulsion of Stencil's narrative,
> or, heck, of V. itself, comes from the form of expression where one's
> soul is at stake

Whenever I read Pynchon, I'm looking for the spoor of heresy. It's  
always there in one form or another.

> Without unduly taxing my interpretive capacities, maybe I can attach
> some more significance to Sarah's name: as the progenitor of the line
> from which Rachel and Esther are later to spring, her situation is
> more primitively oppressed than theirs

If nothing else, she represents an earlier stage of development of her  
tribe.

I'm nobody's idea of a biblical scholar, I've got an aversion to all  
things biblical, so I never made clear passage through the Old  
Testament. I posted the "Sarah" story from Genesis in the hope that it  
might ring the bells of others. I suspect that there is an older layer  
in the development of the story that became Genesis 11 through 23,  
older myths. Note that in the Bible story, Abraham is afraid that  
Sarah's beauty is so great, that if his true relation as husband to  
Sarah was known, his life would be in danger. So, Abe pretends that  
Sarah is his sister. The couple is driven by famine to Eygpt. The  
Pharaoh takes a liking to Sarah. The Bible doesn't refer to "Abe the  
Pimp", but for all intents and purposes Abraham is exchanging his life  
for his wife's sexuality.

Foppl [?] is afraid that his Sarah would be discovered by his mates,  
it is her life that is put at risk. And his fear was more than  
justified:

		Yet how long could he have had her to himself? During
	the day he manacled her to the bed, and he continued to use
	the woman-pool at night so he wouldn't arouse suspicion.
	Sarah might have cooked, cleaned, comforted, been the
	closest thing to a wife he'd ever had. But on that foggy,
	sweating, sterile coast there were no owners, nothing
	owned. Community may have been the only solution
	possible against such an assertion of the Inanimate. Soon
	enough his neighbor the pederast had discovered her and
	become enchanted. He requested Sarah; this was answered
	by the lie that she'd come from the pool and the pederast
	could wait his turn. But it could only get them a reprieve. The
	neighbor visited his house during the day, found her
	manacled and helpless, took her his own way and then 		
	decided, like a thoughtful sergeant, to share this good 	
	fortune with his platoon. Between noon and suppertime, as
	the fog's glare shifted in the sky, they took out an abnormal
	distribution of sexual preferences on her, poor Sarah, "his"
	Sarah only in a way that poisonous strand could never
	support.

		He came home to find her drooling, her eyes drained for
	good of all weather. Not thinking, probably not having taken
	it all in, he unlocked her shackles and it was as if like a
	spring she'd been storing the additive force that convivial
	platoon had expended in amusing themselves; for with an
	incredible strength she broke out of his embrace and fled,
	and that was how he saw her, alive, for the last time.
	V., 289, HPMC

I keep coming back to the notion that Sarah, a Princess, knows in her  
heart that she is one of the elect. Her horrible fate is that much  
darker thanks to her distinction.

		Named Iscah.
		—In Rabbinical Literature:

		Sarah was the niece of Abraham, being the daughter
	 of his brother Haran. She was called also "Iscah" (Gen. xi. 29),
	because her beauty attracted general attention and admiration
	(Meg. 14a). She was so beautiful that all other persons seemed
	apes in comparison (B. B. 58a). Even the hardships of her journey
	with Abraham did not affect her beauty (Gen. R. xi. 4). According
	to another explanation, she was called Iscah because she had
	prophetic vision (Meg.l.c.). She was superior to Abraham in the
	gift of prophecy (Ex. R. i. 1.). She was the "crown" of her husband;
	and he obeyed her words because he recognized this superiority
	on her part (Gen. R. xlvii. 1). She was the only woman whom God
	deemed worthy to be addressed by Him directly, all the other
	prophetesses receiving their revelations through angels
	(ib.xlv. 14). On their journeys Abraham converted the men, and
	 Sarah the women (ib.xxxix. 21). She was called originally
	"Sarai,"i.e., "my princess," because she was the princess of
	her house and of her tribe; later she was called "Sarah" =
	"princess," because she was recognized generally as such

	(Ber. 13a; Gen. R. xlvii. 1).

:http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=245&letter=S#ixzz13f2lhy68

		The next day her body was washed up on the beach.
	She had perished in a sea they would perhaps never
	succeed in calming any part of. Jackals had eaten her
	breasts.
	V., 289, HPMC

> - Andrea Dworkin's thesis being the conceptual line (rather than
> progenitive) connecting them?

Are you talking Matriarchal contra Patriarchal? I'll go for that, and  
it is the Jewish way after all, inheritance running through mothers.

> They are hauling stones by hand and plopping them in the water to make
> this thing!  the old scars bearing testimony to how much coercion has
> been required, and even still she doesn't snap to, the way he'd like
>
>>               She looked at the chit, then at him. Clouds moved
>>       across those eyes; whether reflected or transmitted he'd
>>       never know. Brine slapped at their feet, carrion birds wheeled
>>       in the sky. The breakwater stretched behind them back to
>>       land and safety; but it could take only a word; any, the most
>>       inconsequential, to implant in each of them the perverse
>>       notion that their own path lay the other way, on the invisible
>>       mole not yet built; as if the sea were pavement for them, as
>>       for our Redeemer.

Note the echo of "Clouds moved across those eyes; whether reflected or  
transmitted he'd never know" in "He came home to find her drooling,  
her eyes drained for good of all weather."

> another harsh Line created by man, patriarchy and slavery!  Perhaps
> the worst of the lot!

See "Mason & Dixon" for more details.

> and even in Foppl himself, the Christ who I'd
> argue isn't dismissed at all in V.

In a way, Pynchon is exploring a world that G-d has abandoned in "V."

The author returns to the haunts of "V.", or at least the Stencilized  
sections, later in his career and seems to come to different  
conclusions. There seems to be more room for G-d, or at least the Lord  
over lunch, in "Against the Day."

> exists in any potential verbal
> encounter to draw them away from their endeavor - and yet, what
> they've been building makes following that prompting a major hazard, a
> turning away like Roger and Jessica's from the harsh War-mother
> symbolized in V. by the various incarnations of V.?

I guess you'll have to expand on those thoughts before I'll comprehend  
them. I do see a lot of the ideas in chapter 9 expand in Gravity's  
Rainbow, no question of that, particularly as regards sick, anti-human  
sex.

--------------------------------------------------------------

	 Oh – fortunately the prize has only been
	given to authors – unlike the Academy
	Award which is given to a female and a
	male, indicating the derision of the
	human specie – God damn it!