V.--2nd, back to 1913

[Mark Kohut]

"but I drifted"----Mae West......

I have just reread again [sic] Chapters 14 & 15 in the early morning dark 
quiet--another inadvertent metaphor.....
and want to just opine:

We might all agree that the piercing climax of Chap 14 is the most unforgettable 
scene in V. 
It still makes me squirm, wanting to avoid it. I feel it in my bowels, resonance 
intended.

Contrary to Robin's dissing, this Chapter seems as key to the deep vision of 
History
as the Mondaugen chapter. My feeling now is that its weakness may be 
overarticulation of too many crammed-in
themes.  Modern social decadence is written of in prosey words. Fetishism as 
Kingdom of Death is stated.
 As is tourism--a bit more suggestive and a newer theme, though. V.'s 'love' is 
"only another version of tourism", we learn.
Of course, such fullness might be its strength.

 I think of "It's Showtime' , that thematic refrain from ALL THAT JAZZ as a way 
to see V. portraying GR's line,
"it's all theater".......Yet, it isn't. People die. & Millions soon will, P is 
also always saying. 

1913 for P. is the summer before the Guns of August summer leading to the Great 
War,as is also said straight in this chapter. That 
Global horror hit the world, esp. writers of historical optimism, typified by 
Wells, & scores of others [see The Great War &
Modern Memory] like a betrayal/refutation of all hope in historical progress for 
the world. We know how important WW1
is in all of P's fiction thru AtD...

P. shows in Chap 14, a fictional work of (major) attempted Art portraying the 
horror horribly--music like bombs!---even before art intersected with a life to
end it... 

And V herself is a handmaiden to this, a force of history. We learn she is 33--a 
mythic age---which means she was born in 1880.
Street lights, those putrid yellow lights of anti-light.....see first page of V. 
and Against the Day passim.....first went on in that 
year. This chapter remarks that she would be seventy-six now, 1956, the present 
tense of the novel, as Stencil imagines her having
become fully inanimate. NOW.1956....her whole life is spread before us for 
understanding.........

V. disappears at M.'s death. Lots of rumors. But, how it happened is never 
answered. From my first careless reading, I thought
V. caused M's deah somehow. Reading all of the rumors on the page more 
carefully, I still wonder. And I mean literally caused it
somehow, not just as is obvious, caused the death of Love in the Western World 
in P's vision...................


 
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