V---2nd Epilogue

[Mark Kohut]

---MB notices:
Stencil: "What's the matter with Whitehall?"
Demivolt (singing): "It's all right!"

never caught that call-and-response before!


Neither did I!...and now it reminds me of the semi-pervasive line
"it's all good" that goes around this country.......
And Dylan's terrif version which has so much ambiguity, i.e. richness of double 
interpretation in
that latest, next last?, CD...........


----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, March 16, 2011 1:58:45 AM
Subject: Re: V---2nd Epilogue

Mark Kohut wrote:
> "if he will inform for me, he will inform against me".....
>
> All trust gone when one begins to 'inform', spy, gather and pass on 
information
> to Authority
>
>

"Stencil wanted to ask: if you sympathize, why inform?  He had used
informers as a journeyman his tools and had never tried to understand
their motives.  Usually he supposed it was no more than a personal
grudge, a desire for revenge.  But he'd seen them before, torn:
committed to some program or other, and still helping along its
defeat."

shortfall in the compassion department?

Maijstral's been steered to Stencil, but he would've had to make some
kind of approach to the British diplomatic machinery.  The
description, brief as it is, doesn't bespeak greed (a typical motive
in spycraft, though not mentioned here), nor revenge:
"...neither aggressive nor humble, merely existing: whitening hair,
unkempt mustaches.  A nervous tic in the man's upper lip made the food
particles trapped there vibrate disturbingly."

an older person used to the fairly benevolent rule of the Empire,
probably acting from conviction, On the Waterfront type of thing
(dockworker informer, eh?)



"What of the real present, the men-of-no-politics, the
once-respectable Golden Mean?  Obsolete; in any case, lost sight of."

yet just such a man is what Stencil might find if he gave Maijstral
his full attention

now this is simple imputation - but I think that Stencil's probably
fully aware of that, allows Maijstral the dignity of not having to
explain his motives, and allows himself the romantic illusion of being
a hard-bitten operative


---
Stencil: "What's the matter with Whitehall?"
Demivolt (singing): "It's all right!"

never caught that call-and-response before!



- "What about Moffitt," Stencil said.  "As long as they're staging a
reunion of the Florence crew."

"Moffit caught it in Belgrade, I thought you'd heard."
Belgrade having been recaptured from the Germans in 1918 and created
capital of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later
Yugoslavia.
- one wonders in passing what kind of outcome Moffit was there in aid of...

-- First mention of Father Fairing "R.C. priest, Jesuit I suspect"



Stencil's dream of entering a brain contains a temporally challenging
mention of (nerve-)autobahn: although one article states that a
superhighway of sorts was commenced in 1913 - but it was called
something else
http://www.gettingaroundgermany.info/autobahn.shtml
However, as a generic term it certainly could've been in use.