V-2nd - Chap 8 / All We Are Saying Is Give "V." A Chance . . .

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 30, 2010, at 3:38 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

>> wouldn't two or one Traverse brother have worked just as well?
>
> Perhaps even better.
>
> To me the brothers appear like the nephews of Donald Duck:
>
> I never can tell them apart!
>
Kai

I can tell Kit apart. I can tell Cyprian apart. I can tell you that  
there are figures whose destinies engage me in Against the Day. Huey,  
Dewey, and Louie? Well -- yeah sure but do you know any cluster-fucks  
of brothers? How -- personality-wise -- they can be a little hard to  
tell apart? There's a certain variety of mirroring and refraction  
going on here, some aspect of Iceland Spar is invested in all parts of  
the book and for that matter all of creation as well, which I guess is  
sort of the point of "Against the Day" in the first place.

I have had a hard time caring about Benny. In my mind, he's been a  
cipher about exhausted post-World War II American ambition. A  
cardboard stand-in where a character should be. And Stencil is more of  
a process than an actualized human, an intellectual entity that spits  
up various fabulist tales in multiple persona.

But now that I'm on the same page as the rest of you, where Benny is  
swatting at flies with a rolled-up New Yawk Times in front of the  
Public Library -- his base of operations -- it dawns that "V." really  
is the author, his hopelessly divided self. From what I've read, there  
is Pynchon the relentless peruser of intellectual outliers. And then  
there is "Nearer My Couch to Thee." It seems/feels schizoid, this  
mirroring. Of course by the time we get to "Against the Day", the  
author realizes that there's mirroring upon mirroring upon mirroring,  
endless, inexhaustible, improbably vast and yet and still "everything  
connects . . ."

I find it impossible to get all hung up on Stencil in an emotional way  
even as I apply his M.O. to reading Pynchon. Or maybe possibility I'm  
in a "Stranger Than Fiction" [2006] scenario . . .

	I’m listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound
	Someone’s always yelling turn it down
	Feel like I’m drifting
	Drifting from scene to scene
	I’m wondering what in the devil could it all possibly mean?

. . . of course things could always change, maybe I never really gave  
"V." a chance, anyway.

If Pynchon is a Child of his Time, then my question is: What sort of  
time was 1963?

I look at "V." as more akin to "Narcissus & Goldmund," with its  
lopsided plot and its depiction of the deeply divided self, one of  
those biggies for fans of Freud. And I can see how "On The Road" left  
its mark on the young author. Of course, there been a few other bridge  
builders between the Beats & the Freaks, Allen Ginsberg, the Fugs and  
their country cousins The Holy Modal Rounders leap to mind, a certain  
Robert Zimmerman as well.

Seems like Benny's enjoying the Bi-Polar lifestyle these days, barely  
on the edge of slipping into the Upper Bay whillst yo-yo-ing from job  
to job. And it seems like Benny's misadventures must have been born of  
tales from the local Village idiots, zensters and scenesters,  
fabulistly expanded by the local enviornment and perhaps a useful  
substance or two. I'd guess that the young author must have been  
temporarily sucked into the Great Folk Scare, if only long enough for   
"V." and a short story or two. Lord only knows that Richard Farina was  
the physical embodiment of all of that "Way Back In The 1960s."

When you get right down to it, Pynchon's outliers -- his show  of  
freaks, anarchists, dreamers, dopers, scientists, magicians,  
musicians, losers, 99.99 %tilers and other heretics -- constitute the  
UBI of his oeuvre.

PS:  I'm digging Mike's digging into the temporal geo-political scene  
of that era, daddy-o

"O
tell me all about
Anna Livia! I want to hear all
about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course,
we all know Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now. You'll die
when you hear. " -- Ole Whathizname