V-2nd - Conclusion - questions

[Mark Kohut]

AND another goddam thing that is so frustratingly fascinating and maybe 
semi-sublime herein the Epilogue:

Tony Tanner sez that Shakespeare may have even 'surprised himself' in The 
Winter's Tale, pointing to
ambiguous connective reaches full of mystery yet and

I want to say, THIS CHAPTER in V. is perhaps THE ONE where young P might most 
have surprised
his own self???/


----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Sat, March 12, 2011 2:59:40 PM
Subject: V-2nd - Conclusion - questions

Plot-related, not thematic:

1.    "He [Stencil the elder] found himself hoping there was indeed adultery 
between his old 'love' [V.] and the shipfitter [Fausto's father]; if only to 
complete a circle begun in England eighteen years ago, a beginning kept forcibly 
from his thoughts for the same period of time.
    Herbert would be eighteen.  And probably helling it all about the dear old 
isles.  What would he think of his father ...
    His father, ha." 

V. is Herbert Stencil's mother, no?  But who is his father?  It's implied here 
that it's not Sydney Stencil.  Was Maijstral Senior present in Florence?

2.  Is the epilogue "real," i.e. told from the viewpoint of the omniscient 
Narrator, as opposed to being one of Herbert Stencil's thought experiments?
A clue that it's not real is that there's a reference to 1956.  But why does 
Herbert then imagine that the elder Stencil isn't his real father/

3.  At the end, what does Stencil drop into the water?  It can't be the eye, 
because that's removed from the Bad Priest later on.

Laura