V-2 - Chapter 9 - Remote Viewing of a Public Lynching

[Robin Landseadel]

	I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
	Alive with fiery breath
	And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
	That put him out to death
	Oh, I awoke in anger
	So alone and terrified
	I put my fingers against the glass
	And bowed my head and cried



		Mondaugen stayed alone in the turret for a few dozen
	visitations from the sferics, this being the only link remaining with  
the
	kind of time that continued to pass outside Foppl's. He was
	awakened from a light sleep by the sound of explosions to the east.
	When he finally decided to climb out the stained-glass window to
	investigate, he found that everyone had rushed to the roof. . .


Note how this particular route is repeated throughout the story,  
underlining passage through the turret's window, reinforcing the  
Reference to Galileo much as "The Courier's Tragedy" points to  
Giordano Bruno.


	. . . A battle, a real one, was in progress across the ravine. Such was
	their elevation that they could see everything spread out in
	panorama, as if for their amusement. A small group of Bondels
	huddled among some rocks: men, women, children and a few
	starved-looking goats. Hedwig inched her way across the roof's
	shallow slope to Mondaugen and held his hand. ''How exciting," she
	whispered, eyes huger than he'd ever seen them, blood crusted on
	her wrists and ankles. . .


Where have you been Girl! You a mess!


  	. . .Declining sunlight stained the bodies of the Bondels to a  
certain
	orange. Thin wisps of cirrus floated diaphanous in a late afternoon
	sky. But soon the sun had turned them blinding white.

		Surrounding the besieged Bondels, in a ragged noose, were
	whites, closing, mostly volunteer except for a cadre of Union officers
	and non-corns. They exchanged occasional gunfire with the natives, 	
	who seemed to have only half-a-dozen rifles among them. Doubtless 	
	there were human voices down there, uttering cries of command, 	
	triumph, pain; but at this distance only the tiny pop-pop of gunshots
	could be heard. To one side was a singed area, streaked with the
	gray of pulverized rock and littered with bodies and parts of bodies
	which had once belonged to Bondels.


	"Bombs," Foppl commented. ''That's what woke us up."


Death from above is what the Bondels woke up to, and focusing on this  
particular engagement underscores how Pynchon is studying the history  
of Rocketry and the Apocalypse, with a view to those transforming  
events from the sky that might be a message from on high and then  
again maybe just might be death. This may not have been the first  
ariel bombardment a civilian population ever had to suffer, but it is  
beyond question one of the most one-sided. And in this portrayal, it  
is present as pure spectacle for a rather sick audience, not only  
figuratively, as in Kurt's expression of soul-sickness, but quite  
literally as well. We are told soon that a full third of Foppl's  
guests were bedridden. Makes me wish I read Magic Mountain last year  
rather than in 1974, though the view from "The Past Recaptured" can't  
be all that different. In many ways Pynchon captures the decadence of  
Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice and Magic Mountain and  
takes it a few steps further.


		Someone had come up from below with wine and glasses,
	and cigars. . . .	


The Society of Spectacle.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/


		. . .Over the horizon from the direction of the Union came two
	biplanes, flying low and lazy, like birds wandered away from a flock.
	''That's where the bombs came from," announced Foppl to his
	company. So excited now that he slopped wine on the roof.
	Mondaugen watched it flow in twin streams all the way to the
	eaves. It reminded him somehow of his first morning at Foppl's,
	and the two streaks of blood (when had he began to call it blood?)
	in the courtyard. A kite lit lower down on the roof and began to
	peck at the wine. Soon it took wing again. When had he begun to
	call it blood?


Almost like TV, a "remote viewing" of a public lynching.


		. . . The planes looked as if they would come no nearer, only
	hang forever in the sky. The sun was going down. The clouds had
	been blown terribly thin, and begun to glow red, and seemed to
	ribbon the sky its entire length, filmy and splendid, as if it were
	they that held it all together. One of the Bondels suddenly
	appeared to run amok: stood upright, waving a spear, and began
	to run toward the nearest part of the advancing cordon. The whites
	there bunched together and fired at him in a flurry of pops, echoed
	by the pop of corks on Foppl's roof. He had almost reached them
	before he fell.


Again and again we perceive the natives of south-west Africa as less  
than human, portrayed as miniaturized and at such a distance as to not  
cause concern.


		Now the planes could be heard: a snarling, intermittent sound.
	They swooped clumsy in a dive toward the Bondelswaartz position:
	the sun caught suddenly the three canisters dropped from each,
	turned them to six drops of orange fire. They seemed to take a
	century to fall. But soon, two bracketing the rocks, two among the
	Bondels and two in the area where the corpses lay, there bloomed
	at last six explosions, sending earth, stone and flesh cascading
	toward the nearly black sky with its scarlet overlay of cloud.
	Seconds later the loud, coughing blasts, overlapping, reached the
	roof. How the watchers cheered. The cordon moved rapidly then,
	through what was now a pall of thin smoke, killing the still-active
	and wounded, sending bullets into corpses, into women and
	children, even into the one goat that had survived. Then abruptly
	the crescendo of cork-pops ceased and night fell. And after a
	few minutes someone lit a campfire out on the battlefield. The
	watchers on the roof retired inside for a night of more than
	usually riotous celebration.
	V., 292/295 HPMC


"Everybody is carrying signs, mostly saying "Hoo-Ray for our side."

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	However, I want to thank Mr. Guinzburg, Tom Guinzburg of the
	Viking Press, who has made it possible for you people to be
	here this evening to enjoy the Friction Citation – the Fiction
	Citation. Gravity’s Rainbow – a small contribution to a certain
	degree, since there are over three and a half billion people in
	the world today. 218 million of them live in the United States
	which is a very, very small amount compared to those that are
	dying elsewhere…