Section the Third, pg.17-19 spies and girls

[Joseph Tracy]

Yeah, I don’t mean innocent as in without lust or experience but innocent as in not violating his conscience on behalf of some grand or secret allegiance. In our glimpse into the therapies we see him trying to separate from the obligations of Calvinism, while Calvinism disguised as behaviorism is finding a new footing in those who seek greater control.

> On Apr 5, 2016, at 10:43 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If I use the phrase "the reasonably innocent soul of Slothrop" later and over and over,
> you will remember I stole it from you, right?  Seems Goldilocks-right. Perhaps a little 
> 'obsessed'; there will be adultery in his future and spying (for good reasons?), but he's
> generously life-embracing as innocents abroad usually are. 
> 
> And the unknown 'girls' here in the story
> are also presented as innocents, building bird feeders and more. 
> 
> Covering the whole crew verbally, as you noticed in an earlier post, before
> we move on seems on the mark to me. 
> You were first to mention spies. So, they are a reworking, enlarging of the whole sick crew by TRP---
> yes? from one perspective except they, some, spy. Spy vs Spy. No more 'reasonable innocence' for many 
> and therefore in P's vision here? 
> 
> Since I am hooked on Towers as a modernist symbol, notice "Tower Hill" below, a dense cluster where the girls
> are the religious meaning, so to speak---see Laura on where the 'fun' is. ....'violet density", that female color coded in P...Mayfair...such resonances.
> 
> “The stars pasted up on Slothrop’s map cover the available spectrum, beginning with silver (labeled “Darlene”) sharing a constellation with Gladys, green, and Katharine, gold, and as the eye strays Alice, Delores, Shirley, a couple of Sallys—mostly red and blue through here—a cluster near Tower Hill, a violet density about Covent Garden, a nebular streaming on into Mayfair, Soho, and out to Wembley and up to Hampstead Heath—in every direction goes this glossy, multicolored, here and there peeling firmament, Carolines, Marias, ”
> 
> “He moves back down the beaverboard maze,"
> Of course, it would be on beaverboard. 
> 
> Joseph: 
> "Bloat, Prentice, and Feel  who may be the ones sadly disconnected from real sexual and personal relationships as the last line in this chapter and many other lines in the novel indicate."       
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Was just reading some missed posts about the scene reconstuction of London at the time. Good to get Monte’s feedback from his Father who was there. This chapter has that quality of realism sandwiched into the stranger stuff. Girls first appear here, women really, but they are called girls because that is how the men are seeing them. Later we meet women like Jessica and Katje etc.
> 
> …you can hear winter birds cheeping outside, busy at the feeders the girls have put up.
> 
> “Girl at the main desk, gumpopping, good-natured bespectacled ATS, waves him on upstairs”
> 
> “The stars pasted up on Slothrop’s map cover the available spectrum, beginning with silver (labeled “Darlene”) sharing a constellation with Gladys, green, and Katharine, gold, and as the eye strays Alice, Delores, Shirley, a couple of Sallys—mostly red and blue through here—a cluster near Tower Hill, a violet density about Covent Garden, a nebular streaming on into Mayfair, Soho, and out to Wembley and up to Hampstead Heath—in every direction goes this glossy, multicolored, here and there peeling firmament, Carolines, Marias, ”
> 
> “He moves back down the beaverboard maze, in the weak yellow light, against a tide of incoming girls in galoshes, aloof Bloat unsmiling, no time for slap-and-tickle here you see, he still has his day’s delivery to make. . . .”
> 
> Bloat speculates that the girls may be imagined and that has been batted around, but it seems that from what we gather in the text it is Bloat, Prentice, and Feel  who may be the ones sadly disconnected from real sexual and personal relationships as the last line in this chapter and many other lines in the novel indicate.
> 
> Life and youth are all around along with the fear and duties of war to which these felows have attached themselves.  But there are no James Bonds or even Tyrone Slothrops in this crowd.
> 
> 
> 
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