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

[Richard Ryan]

Where is Glenn Scheper when you need him?

My sense is that Rachel is a realist (appropriate for the most fully
realized woman in the novel....)

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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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>



-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty
of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.
    -- Hannah Arendt