V2, Chap 15 (Sahha), I, p 461 - "Mene, mene tekel, upharsin"

[Mark Kohut]

I like this free-wheeling (w)rap on relationship stuff herein. 

i'm hoping others will comment and I'll get personal and bring back
my question of yesterday since I can't get naked Rachel out of my head
since i'm that kind of reader so, especially any women still on the plist:

What does it mean for Rachel to sit there entirely naked---her cunt like a 
mouth, P sez--
with entirely naked Benny when both know it is over (if for different reasons, 
maybe)
and Benny is heading to Malta with no sentiment(ality) from Rachel?....

They've just done it? A goodbye fuck?.....as when Rachel offered herself chapter 
'fore last or so--
here, free sex, she said?.....

If they have, why is THAT not overtly stated?..If we infer, it is NOT a 
surety........???
And, usually in bed or more intertwined---or more separate?---if done fucking 
and ending?





----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tue, February 15, 2011 2:07:58 AM
Subject: Re: V2, Chap 15 (Sahha), I, p 461 - "Mene, mene tekel, upharsin"

first, thanks for posting on this passage.  It's one that I never
focused on before.

Richard Ryan wrote:
> I realized on reflection that I mis-stated the scenario here.  It's
> *not* the case that Rachel's wall posting is addressed to the Boys -
> it's directed at Benny specifically.

and, having massively prepared himself for this rejection, courted it
assiduously,
Benny's reaction is "ho-hum"

> Stencil's biblical quotation
> interjects his own paranoid ends into an exchange meant to occur
> between Benny and Rachel exclusively.

It seems like maybe Stencil is pointing it out, in a Scoutmasterly or
donnish way, to Benny, to be helpful.
and maybe it's also Stencil's idea of a witticism?


  Kevin Finucane, in his
> web-published notes on "V.",  observes that "Stencil is...perhaps
> somewhat manipulatively, suggesting obliquely that Profane's
> relationship with Rachel may have run its course."
>

And maybe probing a little, like "how hard is this hitting you, Benny?"
or even giving him a straight line for his "ho-hum"?

>
> Is this the point where "V." truly becomes a "buddy" novel?  With
> Stencil's caustic and subversive Tom coaxing and cajoling Benny's Huck
> back out on the road - the twist here being that Becky Thatcher is in
> love with Huck....
>

doesn't it seem here like Benny and Rachel really are thru, though?

Like, with Josephine he has rejected a (by implication incestuous, or
at least insufficiently exogamous) involvement with her and with the
Latinate, Romance Language, Catholic way of life, and with Rachel he
asserts his individuality again by refusing to climb the other
(Jewish) side of his family tree...

leaving him (spoiler)...



ready to meet up with Brenda Wigglesworth (a prominent Protestant
name, right? and thus a lady from neither his "mensch" or his
"Machiavel" heritage, an unexplored frontier -

http://healingandrevival.com/BioSWigglesworth.htm

http://www.answers.com/topic/michael-wigglesworth)



-- 
"The general agreement is that language should be a kind of honey.  I
like it to be a kind of speed." - Michael Moorcock



 
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