V--2nd, Prolegomena to an Epilogue

[Ian Livingston]

Although I do, as ever, swoon before Alice's sweeping insight, I
return to the text for more.

Brenda, of Beaver College (c'mon, we all get beaver as slang for
pudenda), in our introduction to her (452), evinces characteristics
very apropos to Profane's persona: "High she remained all the way
across the Atlantic...." "she came to herself--or at least to the
inviolable Puritan she'd show up as come marriage...." "Skeletons,
carapaces, no matter: her inside too was her outside...." She seems an
integration of the animate and the inanimate. "and it seemed there
were Beaver and the Street for them separately to return to; and both
agreed this was nowhere, but some of us do go nowhere and can con
ourselves into believing it to be somewhere: it is a kind of talent
and objections to are rare but even at that captious." This is what
Benny has not "learned", ain't it?  That nowhere is everywhere, and
vice versa? Brenda the Beaver is "the twentieth century" (454), and
that connotes to me a very Freudian connection, as the 20C was all
about discovering the nowhereness of Freud: diving into the sexual
permissiveness of the postwar era and the pursuant unconscionable
procreation of endlessly benighted Oedipoi, searching out fathers to
kill, mothers to love, and therapists to help them con themselves into
believing their inner journey be going somewhere; and she (Brenda the
Beav) is "the Street," too, so sex is tao, the way. The
Street--capital "S"-- to where, to what? As they run down the
street--small "s"--all artificial "illumination" in Valletta is
extinguished and "momentum alone," carries them onward together:
something makes them more than just kindred, they share a momentum, an
impetus that carries them into the darkness at "the edge of Malta, and
the Mediterranean beyond." They are conjoined in a union of mutual
admissibility, entering the unknown together. And, in the first
complete sentence of the next chapter we learn the figurehead of
Sidney's xebec is Astarte, the goddess of sexual (venal) love. Are we
not invited to seek points of comparison and contrast between B&B and
V.&S?

Seems to me young P. waxes quite poetic here. It's not that everything
is groovy--far from it--it is a leap together into the darkness where
we all fumble and recover continually, where, as Will Durant says of
Calvin, "we will agree that even error lives because it serves some
vital need" (The Reformation, 490). Entering the darkness as a couple
offers the comfort of another animate hand to help us up when we fall,
as opposed to Sidney's entrance from the rock to the Mediterranean
beyond in the Epilogue.

And what of young Herbert? Although he says Maijstral's story
"clinches" V.'s identity (449), he runs off into the night alone,
still chasing clues.

So, the question remains, who has gone anywhere? Who has learned
anything? Methinks, perhaps, Benny doth protest too loudly in his
exchange with Brenda on the subject.

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 2:21 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I can see Brenda as a partial stand-in for young Pynchon too---that poem is not
> poetry but it is
> a lot of TRP's themes , and is dismissed as college-girl
> stuff...............................
>
> And Benny had to go off to the Mediterranean--the Navy--- to learn enuff life to
> write..........
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Thu, March 3, 2011 2:37:03 PM
> Subject: Re: V--2nd, Prolegomena to an Epilogue
>
> I sort of imagine (with zero evidence!!) that Brenda looks at Profane the way
> young Pynchon may have looked at Kerouac.  So Benny's answer to Brenda is the
> one Kerouac might have given to Pynchon: endless roaming doesn't teach you
> squat.  Better to sit in one place and try to write that Great American Novel.
>
> Laura
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>Sent: Mar 3, 2011 10:43 AM
>>To: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>, P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>Subject: Re: V--2nd, Prolegomena to an Epilogue
>>
>>so interesting.....
>>
>>So, I focussed, perhaps myopically, on what I called the bleakness of the very
>>last paragraph.
>>
>>You took a more wide-angle look at the whole last chapter......
>>
>>Which, now as I read some of your observations on Benny and Brenda lead me
>>to not think of the ending of Gravity's Rainbow---which very compactly
> envisions
>> a little togetherness, touchingness (two senses at least) and interpersonal
>>communication
>>before...........the bomb falls...........THE END.
>>
>>Anyone else see it this way? Anyone, anyone?
>>
>>
>>----- Original Message ----
>>From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>>To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>Sent: Thu, March 3, 2011 2:34:52 AM
>>Subject: Re: V--2nd, Prolegomena to an Epilogue
>>
>>I'm trying to muster any evidence, but my subjective impression was
>>that ol' Benny and Brenda have a good thing going.
>>I'm always happy for him when I review this passage.
>>
>>
>>The depth and darkness of the night always strike me as being
>>refreshing and clean, if that makes sense.
>>(and perhaps a sign that he has achieved his initial aim of putting
>>out the sun (if you want to refer back to that))
>>
>>he's made his way through x amount of months and hasn't re-enlisted
>>
>>he's met some interesting people
>>
>>he has not lied about himself, and therefore...
>>he has avoided making commitments that he can't meet
>>
>>he hasn't learned anything - but, what was he supposed to learn?  once
>>you learn something, they'll probably change it all anyway...
>>
>>not only that, but it seems like BW and BP will be able to talk
>>comfortably, important for a longer term relationship ----
>>
>>summed up by BW's poem which is, well, not affectless, but certainly
>>not offputtingly emotional, a-and it's soon over (not a long poem...)
>>and she introduces it in a self-deprecating way that is in harmony
>>with his self-deprecation
>>
>>and the succinct way he signifies his approval seems heartfelt (for
>>him) -- "seems about right" (or words to that effect)
>>
>>So I suggest that - unlike all his other conversational partners,
>>starting with Dewey Gland and his "PFC" song (BP says, "that's pretty"
>>(or something patently insincere like that) and DG says "there's
>>more"...) in BW, BP has finally met somebody whose discourse, if you
>>will, meets his standards...
>>
>>
>>I dunno, anyway, my strong impression at the end is warm and fuzzy,
>>that beautiful black velvet night sky and the sea air...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>"The general agreement is that language should be a kind of honey.  I
>>like it to be a kind of speed." - Michael Moorcock
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>



-- 
"Psyche pasa athantos." --Plato