V--2nd how about that ending, eh?

[Mark Kohut]

I like all the attendant readings that this embodies, Ian's, Michael B.'s but

I haveta ask: they run 'toward the edge of Malta"...not into it..and to the 
[sea] beyond....

If all that good stuff is true, are Benny and Brenda not up to it in V.? 


----- Original Message ----
From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
To: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
Cc: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>; Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; 
pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; braden.andrews at gmail.com
Sent: Fri, March 4, 2011 3:04:04 PM
Subject: Re: V--2nd how about that ending, eh?

>>> "Presently, sudden and in silence, all illumination in Valletta, houselight and 
>>>streetlight, was extinguished. Profane and Brenda ["whom he'd met yesterday"] 
>>>continued to run through the abruptly absolute night, momentum alone carrying 
>>>them toward the edge of Malta, and the Mediterranean beyond."
>
>On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> Right, well, aren't night (darkness) and the sea two principle archetypes of 
>the unknown/unconscious?

The novel V. is very much grounded in archetypes. And the island Malta
is a central archetypal, spiritual ground, literally the site of the
oldest (matriarchal) surviving temples on the planet.  It is almost
literally, and very much symbolically,  the navel of the planet.

The "character," V, is a modern (but also very old (incubus, golem))
archetype, a counter-archetype of the Virgin.  So Ian's observation, I
think, is right to the point.  Brenda and Profane's leap might be seen
as a nihilistic act, but I don't think it is.  It seems a much more
euphoric act, hopeful, not desolate.  And I think the fact that they
leap together, archetypal spouses, emphasizes their movement forward
into a more "rooted" into the most basic and sacred realms of
consciousness.

David Morris