V2nd Chapter 6 - "You're so close" / the rat pack

[Michael Bailey]

early on in the book, in Stencil's conversation with the Margravine, 2
meanings of "You're so close" emerge.

Stencil (deliberately) misunderstands her: almost certainly she meant
to upbraid him for not being more forthcoming, for being "close", and
by extension, emotionally "closed"

He proceeds conversationally as if she meant "close" as "near" or even
"near and dear"!

Yet, a third meaning of "You're so close" is in my mind all through
Chapter 6 - Benny's so close!  So close to a meaningful relationship
with Fina!  She likes him!  Whatever his faults, he's there, he's got
a pulse, he (sometimes) gets to work and - from my point of view -
represents a desirable exogamous genetic prospect for Fina, the good
old melting pot effect in action.

I see 2 major reasons why he's not available.

The first is the rat pack effect.  (Not necessarily anything against
the famous Rat Pack, although their mien and manner always seemed a
bit menacing and their idea of a good time a bit too wanton, whatever
their (considerable) individual talents may have been...it seems to me
that the occasional wish to be cruel that drifts thru BP is in
emulation of, or at least bears a strong resemblance to, Rat Pack
notions of a good time...but maybe I'm just thinking of rats because
of Fairing's Parish, and also because of DeLillo's explication of the
Speedy Gonzalez jokes shared by Sinatra and Gleason at the ballpark,
and how Speedy makes a quick appearance in V. as well (p118) - the
whole idea being this Latin-American character whose unearthly
quickness ("behold, I come quickly"?) allows him to make love, or at
least have sex, with women in bed before their husbands are able to
achieve coitus.  Why he would want to do this isn't clear to me, nor
is it clear why the women allow it, or how they feel about
it...strange fuckin' vein of humor if you ask me...xenophobic,
unsavory...but even as a sheltered suburban kid in the early 60s I
heard references to Senhor G, though I didn't get any further
knowledge till reading the beginning of Underworld a couple years ago)

Men running together in gangs have a surface tension that individual
romance has a hard time poking through.  There's probably a touch of
concern on Benny's part of retribution coming from her brothers, since
sex in a bathtub is hard to keep secret from the others in an
apartment, although he certainly knows this is easily fixed with a
proposal of marriage if he were open to that idea....
anyway that distinction between girls and con(tilde)o, that's a Rat
Pack thing.  Con(tilde)o is an invention of rat packs.
Supposedly your buddies will give you some slack if they can see it's
the "real thing..."

but the 2nd thing is his schlemihl-hood which prevents him from
accepting any positive change.  And I think this is actually
depression.  Clinical depression, probably, if we wanted to go that
route, but he doesn't have the money for a shrink, and anyway what the
text seems more inclined to link it to is economic depression.

"Where was the Depression?  In the sphere of Benny Profane's guts and
in the sphere of his skull, concealed optimistically by a tight blue
serge coat and a schlemihl's hopeful face."

...and this 2nd thing for me was already linked to the first thing by
the (weirdly difficult to parse - in fact I'm still not sure it
parses, which is something I rarely see in this author's work)
parenthesis in that epic sentence back on page 116 which goes like
this:

"...(or just in from the Midwest, humped, cursed at, coupled and
recoupled beyond all remembrance to the slow easy boys they used to be
or the poor corpses they would make someday)"

---- I want to say, "beyond all resemblance" here, but that's less
dreamlike and anyway I'm inclined to defer to Pynchon (I'm the one
with a day job...thank God!)

but what this passage does is show
1) the bums' temporal bandwidth is narrowed
2) the abuse they suffer has lessened them (as has Profane's)
3) is the humping and cursing that which is being coupled and recoupled?
4) or, they (the bums) are being "coupled and recoupled" to such abuse?
5) the word I'd like to add in Chapter 6, is "decoupled", decouple
Benny from his putative gang-solidarity that he doesn't believe in
anyway - although he and his buds are acting like a branch of the
Playboys themselves - and allow him to believe in himself wearing Mr
Mendoza's suit!

anyway, by virtue of their (abuse-born) inability to shine
individually, they exist as an aggregate (lumpen-proletariat or Rat
Pack) and there's that surface tension that romance, hope, love, find
difficult to rise through...

I'm sure this analysis leaves a lot to be desired.  I'm trying to
think (but nothin' happens) of some other notable book where somebody
witnesses something terrible and doesn't intervene....

oh God, it was the Lester Bangs biography, in his youth he lived in a
garage with bikers and had to watch some poor girl subjected to a gang
bang, and he didn't do anything...






-- 
"I have left my book,
I have left my room,
For I heard your voice
singing through the gloom" - James Joyce