Discuss

[Joseph Tracy]

On Feb 11, 2013, at 9:14 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> From: David Morris 
> Sent: Feb 9, 2013 11:42 PM 
> To: "kelber at mindspring.com" 
> Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org" 
> Subject: Re: Discuss 
> 
> Your fault with Slothrup's disappearance is too literal.  He transcends his creators by evaporating into the void,  Pointsman's biggest fear was the golum, the experiment gone awry.  Rogue.  So they would rather kill it than lose control of it.  Slothrup  evades, but not before becoming a Buddha.
> 
> 
> On Saturday, February 9, 2013, wrote:
> Don't really believe in any sort of deterministic Fate - there are too many incalculable and unpredictable variables.  At any rate, I'd say that what happens in Slothrop's life has more to do with the fact that he was experimented on as a baby, than anything to do with his friendly, and smart but hedonistic character.
> 
> Laura
> 

We are all experimented on as children. How could it be otherwise? My feeling is that the particular artificiality, the human as behavioral, chemical experiment aspect of Slothrop represents the tinkering of the larger system with systems of control and information feedback. It shows how deep the inward incursions of that model will go. Slothrop's story shows the roots of this thinking in Calvinism, Pharisaic notions of God's control of history, or more recently of science as simply technos for the colonial enterprise.   But all the time this theme is being developed there is the clear and both delightful and terrifying story of the thousand ways this system has gone awry, has lost control,  and cannot guide or predict anything but explosives up its own ass.  Slothrop is like  particles of light that seem to illumine the pattern of attack, a tool which properly used may provide escape from death itself, but the more the self appointed experimenters know of his rocket man velocity( velocity which may be approaching a kind of escape velocity) the less is known about where or even whether he is. Where isn't he? Who isn't he? Which part of his time is lesser or greater or unconnectable from any other part of his time. Why does he want to escape control?  

I am dubious about fate too. We may be free whether we like it or not. But can we leave the cave and see something more like the fullness of the world, wake up, make ourselves at home, make peace with our freedom, learn to play rather than kill.