Horst

[Fiona Shnapple]

When is a toilet not just a toilet? Anytime we follow a Pynchon
character into one. When we meet Horst, as the narrative flashes back
to when Max met Horst, they are drinking and the Bozo, Horst, is
punning on the Toilet. We're in the Ceres in Chicago. Max is on a CFE
chore, Horst is in his old stomping grounds, a gin mill where everyone
is drinking Irish-sized cocktails and Max gets loaded up and argues
with Horst about Deloitte & Touche, or, as he puns them Louche & De
Toilet. Before she can recover, still in a hangover daze, he's on her
tail and nailing it to his schemes. From here, we most of the story in
the present tense of the novel, visits toilets and more toilets in and
around NYC, where, you can get anything you want, but you can't
make/take a shit/piss anywhere. The punning, the language of toilet,
the bathroom humor is like that roller you notice as your squeezing
Death out of your Life into the white toilet bowl, and SHIT!!!

Stranded
Stranded
Stranded on a toilet bowl
Stranded
Stranded
Stranded on a toilet bowl
What do you do when you're stranded
And there ain't nothing on the roll?
To prove you're a man
You must wipe it with your hand
Stranded
Stranded on a toilet bowl !

SHIT!   FUCK! FUCK YOU!

Magic words of the Preterit

So where does this power of profane words come from?
Well, you students of Orwell or Arendt.... know that totalitarianism
is, in part, synthesis and control of discourse. As early as those
Short Stories P is working on this theme, so that in Lowlands and in
TSI the junk, the waste, what is discarded, tossed away, disposed of,
the preterit shit...has magic in it, has great Natural Power, a
scatterbrained floundering fecundity. The power of the pun, of the
profane words, of the subversive preterit use of technology, of even
TV and pop culture, to counter the culture of the Elect producers of
prole productivity consumption, late capital, and counter their
esoteric technical language, the language of the Science Elite, this
is why a toilet is never just a toilet.

So is Horst one of Them or one of Us. And in the end we're only
ordinary men....(Dark Side of the Bathroom)

On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 5:10 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sometimes a toilet is just a toilet, but a sewerage network is always
> "a series of tubes".
>
> On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 1:50 AM, Heikki Raudaskoski
> <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Have a deadline to meet, but will be back for an self-exegesis asap,
>>
>> HR
>>
>> On Wed, 4 Dec 2013, Fiona Shnapple wrote:
>>
>>> I may be confused by the use of the terms here, HD, so yeah, when you have
>>> a minute to explain, please and thanks.
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, December 4, 2013, Michael Bailey wrote:
>>>
>>> >
>>> > On Dec 3, 2013 10:22 AM, "Heikki Raudaskoski" <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi');>>
>>> > wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > > FWIW: in GR, the Toiletship episode (where showers are mentioned too) is
>>> > > associated to the aerodynamics man Horst Achtfaden, quite probably even
>>> > > fantasied by him. In BE, Reg's toilet episode precedes Maxine's shower
>>> > > encounter with Horst. These nice Pynchonian metonymies...
>>> > >
>>> >
>>> > > In both cases, though, toilets seem to stand metaphorically for something
>>> > > else (the Rocket's wind tunnel in GR, hashslingrzian secrets in BE). Yet
>>> > > the image of the Toiletship can also be seen as a metaphor of metonymy.
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> >
>>> > I join the clamor requesting elaboration!
>>> >
>>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l