Gold, Man, Sax and Violins CH 6 V-2

[Mark Kohut]

And P.S. 

"I tell tall stories to girls I want to screw, Profane thought. He scratched his 
armpit. "Kill alligators," he said.
        "Wha."
            He told her about the alligators; Angel, who had a fertile 
imagination too, added detail, color. Together on the stoop they hammered     
    together a myth. "

Just like the creation of most myths......colorful detailed elaboration of a bit 
of truth........."He told her about THE alligators", the ones we have been 
reading
about.................



 


----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Thu, September 9, 2010 2:12:34 PM
Subject: Re: Gold, Man, Sax and Violins CH 6 V-2

I agree that there are dual narrators (expressing different attitudes) in V., 
giving the book a schizoid feel. Not sure if every chapter can be neatly tossed 
into the Benny or Stencil pile.  But maybe?  The unflattering view of Rachel 
Owlglass we get in Chapter 1 (Benny) is countered in Chapter 2 (Stencil).  
Chapter 3 is Stencil's; 4, by its grotesque nature goes to Stencil.  5 and 6 are 
Benny's but we'll be hanging on the western wall with Stencil in 7.

But dual narrators aren't the same as unreliable narrators.  Are the Benny 
chapters fantasy?  Joseph brought up an interesting point about Benny's 
alligator comment.  Was the alligator hunting job a fantasy of the unemployed 
drifter?  I'm honestly not sure.  WHat about the opening scenes of carousing 
sailors?  Fantasy?  Is Pig Bodine a fantasy friend concocted by a lonely 
schlemiel? Once you go down the path of Benny-the-unreliable-narrator, where do 
you draw the line?  Does Benny really bare no relation to the psyche of the 
Young Pynchon?  Who or what is he, if not Pynchon's somewhat self-loathing, 
certainly self-deprecating view of himself.  We know the NYC sewers aren't 
infested with alligators.  But we suspend disbelief for the sake of, not just a 
good story, but one that's become iconic, and possibly Pynchon's best-known 
shtick.  But if Profane's thought and subsequent comment to Lucille are meant as 
a wink at us - well, why?  You mean there really aren't alligators?  No shit!  
Or maybe Young Pynchon just wants to play it both ways: not a master literary 
plan, but an undeveloped choice.

Sifting through, then, maybe what I'm arriving at is that Benny and Stencil 
aren't dual halves of Pynchon's psyche.  Benny's the grounded, reality-based 
recent young grad side of P, while Stencil's the voice of P the emerging 
author.  Past becoming future.  Which is a theme in V.. [hate that double 
period!]  Which reminds me of the section in Chap. 6, Part II when Benny's on 
his way to the job interview.  He has nostalgia for the Depression - the era he 
was born in, while walking amidst the affluence of the present day 50s.  From 
30s (past) to 50s (future).  Where's WWII and the 40s?  V's about that jump from 
colonialism to affluent post-war society, from young P to P-the-author.

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>Sent: Sep 8, 2010 11:48 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Gold, Man, Sax and Violins CH 6 V-2
>
>On Sep 8, 2010, at 8:16 PM, Dave Williams wrote:
>
>> The point McHale makes, and he does a better job of this in  
>> "Constructing Postmodernism", is that Pynchon is constantly blowing  
>> up, to gargantuan size, Modernist narrative techniques and  
>> experiments. So, we get Stencil's dislocations and impersonations  
>> and we get Mondaugen's Story third hand and its "truth" or its  
>> factual or historical accuracy can not be confirmed. The narrative  
>> constantly complicates the tales by complicating the narrator or who  
>> is telling the tale and where he got it from and what he did with it  
>> or what he may be  doing with it as we get to hear or read it, or as  
>> someone performs it for an audience and we stand outside without a  
>> ticket and try to imagine what is going on.
>
>Surprise, surprise - - I agree with you!
>
>    Stencil toured one plant out on Long Island. Among instruments
>    of war, he reasoned, some clue to the cabal might show up. It
>    did. He'd wandered into a region of offices, drafting boards,
>    blueprint files. Soon Stencil discovered, sitting half hidden in a
>    forest of file cabinets, and sipping occasionally at the coffee in a
>    paper cup which for today's engineer is practically uniform-
>    of-the-day, a balding and porcine gentleman in a suit of
>    European cut. The engineer's name was Kurt Mondaugen, he
>    had worked, yes, at Peenemunde, developing
>    Vergeltungswaffe Eins and Zwei. The magic initial! Soon the
>    afternoon had gone and Stencil had made an appointment to
>    renew the conversation.
>
>    A week or so later, in one of the secluded side rooms of the
>    Rusty Spoon, Mondaugen yarned, over an abominable
>    imitation of Munich beer, about youthful days in South-West     
>    Africa.
>
>    Stencil listened attentively. The tale proper and the questioning
>    after took no more than thirty minutes. Yet the next Wednesday
>    afternoon at Eigenvalue's office, when Stencil retold it, the yarn
>    had undergone considerable change: had become, as
>    Eigenvalue put it, Stencilized.
>
>    V, page 241
>
>One strange theory -- yours to embrace or reject at will -- is the  
>notion that Benny & Stencil are the Narcissus and Goldmund, twin and  
>opposing halves of the author, the severed self standing in for the  
>author's voice.
>
>But yes, the unreliability of Pynchon's narrators is part and parcel  
>of their status as Satirical characters. This is particularly notable  
>in Mason & Dixon, where the Rvd. Wicks Cherrycoke's need to entertain  
>drives and warps the story.
>