V-2nd - Kudos to Kohut and Bailey

[Michael Bailey]

Kelber asked:
>
> So my question to Kohut and Bailey -- those two valiant torch-bearers! -- and anyone else who'd like to answer:
>
> Has this reading changed your view of the book for better or worse, or left it intact?  What was/is your view of the book anyway?
>


heehee - I have to admit that I loved the book before, but now I
actually know a little about it.  Like the dream-thingie in Chapter 9.
 I always thought it was Mondaugen riding out and romancing that
Sarah.

never noticed the Long Sentence, which if I could address it properly
I'd still like to parse and interpret (my endogenous flaws stop me
short every time I start!)

Never realized that Esther really did in fact go to Havana for an
abortion - caught the "Jacobean etiology" reference in the early
chapter, but somehow must've missed the significance of the party at
Raoul, Slab and Melvin's pad!

Never caught either Benny seeing Fina at the airport, or the parking
lot scene where Rachel hangs "love-for-bums" on him -- just didn't
register

Never understood anything at all from the epilogue except that I liked
the little hand-pointers.  And, well, hard to miss that about the
waterspout...

 Really never put in the time to figure out what was going on in any
of the Stencil chapters before.  Didn't catch any Henry Adams
references, and didn't perceive the importance of the religious
references ---
well, you get the idea.

So, what did I base my love on before?  Other than the cleverness and
the songs? -- The New York beatnik scenes, mostly.  Yes, the same ones
everybody seems to love to hate.  I still think they're pretty cool,

What do I love about it now?  I guess I love the idea that I might
(grid willing) be able to return to this book in say a few years and
catch as much more than I did this time as I caught this time than
last time.  That the landmarks of the book that have stuck in my mind
will have more detritus piled up against them from the current ("where
in a mind whose gyrating gimbals made and unmade islands every year
this crucifix-comb and Sudwest and the characters called Profane and
Stencil had remained fixed realities since time out of mind." - page
534, mutatis mutandis, eh wot?)

I think that I love the idea that somebody in his 20s could write this
book!  He must've been paying attention in class and doing his
homework...and yet also must've had some life experience to hang the
erudition on too!

I love the way he messes with the "topic sentence" in Chapter 13 -
although the first paragraph gets Profane to the ship for the passage,
not another word in the chapter refers to it!

And I know that I love the idea that this sold a Krupp-load of copies
when it came out.  What a different world this was back then! Probably
worse in many respects, but in at least one - the number of people
ready to buy a book like V. - far superiour to our time...

I guess my favorite moment of the read was the idea that Brenda
stepped out of "Goodbye Columbus" (least favorite was when Robin quit,
also miss alice...)



> On the other hand, Mondaugen's Story stands is as brilliant as ever, and the >Esthers Nose Job and V. in Love chapters and The Conclusion could have been >ripped from GR.  Could Pynchon have written GR without this first go-round? > Unlikely.  It's interesting to note that there are no analogs for those >Profane/Whole Sick Crew/NY hipster scenes in GR.  Pynchon himself clearly >rejected that literary dead-end.  It's gone for good.  That alone makes V. a >worthwhile endeavor for the young Pynchon.
>

Saeure Bummer strikes me as the epicenter of a German Whole Sick Crew,
and the Counterforce, with its drawbacks and failures as well as its
moments of triumph, is an apotheosis of a WSC.

In V. the novelistic view of the Crew is ambivalent if not indeed
somewhat disapproving, the moral and physical failings of each and
several being perhaps the major terms in their descriptions -- it's a
wonder that we like them as much as we do, even if that isn't much...
with perhaps the defining event being Rooney "flipping" - all the WSC
lunacy builds toward that point


in GR, though I sense a bit more sympathy and the discernment of
various species of "virtu" within members of the Counterforce, this
doesn't prevent him from showing them "epic fail" at just about
everything they try (Slothrop isn't quite part of the Counterforce
just as BP isn't quite part of the WSC - so his escape from gelding
and recovering his harp can't quite be chalked up as Counterforce
successes)
- and the defining event is Roger "flipping"

If we went directly from here to a GR group read, I'd probably be
drawing those parallels all over the place, and unable to shut up
about it, but at this juncture - reflecting on V. qua V. - I see how
that might not be all that productive...
seeing GR thru a "stencil" of V., that is...

whenever we do address GR, I hope I can be a part of seeing it as GR qua GR
first, although a compare and contrast would make a heck of a term paper...


here's a health to our group and the author who inspires it (a tot of
blackberry brandy in the coffee, eh wot!)