"He thinks he's hallucinating"

[bandwraith at aol.com]

In a general sense, there is that office, in everyone's
dominant frontal lobe, The Man has dibs on. In a
more personal sense, there is Stencil, who no longer
uses the first person pronoun. In Stencil's case, I
think it has more to do with thematic concerns
related to V., and the final deconstruction of Identity,
which is where his search is leading, maybe the
Identity of the whole age.

In Shasta's case, if she is talking to doc, she has
invited him to become like Stencil, stand aside from
himself, and with her consider this "other" person
who thinks he's hallucinating.

If that's the case, she may be just goofin' on him, as
we used to say, although that wasn't always so
innocent, enjoying his surprise at her appearing
unexpectedly out of the past, dressed like Them-
testing his reflexes, so to speak.

Which is a reasonable assumption. whatever. The
point is, she is ostensibly scared and coming to him
for help. She has taken sidestreets because she is
worried about being followed, and parked some
distance away to keep from arousing the suspicions
of whomever might be menacing her. She has no
money, no permanent residence and is worried
that the phone might be bugged. Or so she claims.

She may represent an avatar of that consensus
reality, the baited hook on the end of the wire that doc
has been trying to avoid. I like that. Coming in the
opening scene gives it a heightened sense of
importance- asking the question to be asked.


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, Jan 9, 2011 5:43 pm
Subject: Re: "He thinks he's hallucinating"


alice wellintown wrote:

> Do people talk like Shasta? Do people, when engaged in a conversation
> with only one other person, say, "Thinks he's hallucinating"? Oh,
> sure they do.

right, and what does that say about our society?
that within an affectionate relationship one of the parties addresses
an imaginary personage - who is it supposed to be?  how comes such a
custom to be?  Is there a specific free-floating incarnation of common
sense, tantamount to a spiritual presence, available for address?

Having volubly called into question many practices in the course of
his fiction, the author may have primed the pump or jump started a
process of questioning of
phenomena both on and off the page

The consensus reality that Shasta appeals to, is that not tantamount
to a wire or puppet string which to some extent Doc has chosen to live
free of?