GR translation: We seek no wider agency in this.

[Monte Davis]

Yes. There’s also a slight ambivalence to “agency”:

 

1)      Our task, our action [agency] does not go beyond studying the correlation of Slothrop’s erections with rocket impacts, and we’re satisfied with that

2)      There may be Some Mysterious Entity [agency] at work behind this correlation, but it’s not our job to seek it out  

 

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of kelber at mindspring.com
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 9:20 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: GR translation: We seek no wider agency in this.

 

The strict definition of the event that each star on the map represents is that Slothrop got an erection. Whether it was a just a sexual fantasy or he actually had sex is irrelevant to PISCES - they don't need to inquire further (track down the women, for instance).

 

Laura

-----Original Message----- 
From: Mike Jing 
Sent: Mar 15, 2013 7:01 AM 
To: Pynchon Mailing List 
Subject: GR translation: We seek no wider agency in this. 

P276.4-11   “And what if many—even if most—of the Slothropian stars are proved, some distant day, to refer to sexual fantasies instead of real events? This would hardly invalidate our approach, any more than it did young Sigmund Freud’s, back there in old Vienna, facing a similar violation of probability—all those Papi-has-rapedme stories, which might have been lies evidentially, but were certainly the truth clinically. You must realize: we are concerned, at PISCES, with a rather strictly defined, clinical version of truth. We seek no wider agency in this.”

What does Pointsman mean by the last sentence?  Is the "agency" his own act of inquiry, or does it refer to the hidden cause of Slothrop's apparent ability to predict the rocket's course?  Or something else entirely?

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