BtZ42 Section six. PP 38-42 (miller edition)

[Monte Davis]

" a pulse we have yet to gauge" -- yes.

Maybe it's because I fell hard for Elvis Costello  a few years after
falling hard for GR... really, though, what's so funny about peace, love,
and understanding in Pynchon? For "funny" read "exceptional," "anomalous,"
"threatened," "undermined," "problematized," etc.

I too "am not arguing that Pynchon is arguing anything," but over the years
I've become less willing to see *only* examples of "what doesn't change the
world," or of "fugitive moments stolen from the System," in Roger and
Jessica, or Charles and Jeremiah, or Maureen and Horst's reconciliation, or
the Traverse family picnic in VL, or Oedipa's tenderness for the old sailor
in the flophouse, or Slothrop's for the little girl in the rubble, or...).

Yes, they certainly *are* that. They are also the force that through the
green fuse drives the flower
<https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower> ,
which was in the back of my mind when Laura and I differed on the valence
of the "molecules" and "alkaloids" in the bananery's soil. They are out of
time, a hairsbreadth from the clanking treads of time and history, but they
are always there, and -- for all the times they are crushed -- always,
irrepressibly, coming up again.

"Sometimes [Dally] was overwhelmed by the green life passing in such high
turbulence, too much to see, all clamoring to have its way. Leaves
sawtooth, spade-shaped, long and thin, blunt-fingered, downy and veined,
oiled and dusty with the day—flowers in bells and clusters, purple and
white or yellow as butter, star-shaped ferns in the wet and dark places,
millions of green veilings before the bridal secrets in the moss and under
the deadfalls, went on by the wheels creaking and struck by rocks in the
ruts, sparks visible only in what shadow it might pass over, a busy
development of small trailside shapes tumbling in what had to be
deliberately arranged precision, herbs the wildcrafters knew the names and
market prices of and which the silent women up in the foothills,
counterparts whom they most often never got even to meet, knew the magic
uses for. They lived for different futures, but they were each other’s
unrecognized halves, and what fascination between them did come to pass was
lit up, beyond question, with grace."

"They are in love. Fuck the War" and Death's upcoming reply, "Try to tickle
me," are never reconciled.


On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 7:40 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> When I first read this part of GR in my 20s I thought Roger and
> Jessica were the kind of fictional couple meant to offer hope or at
> least some optimism for the reader. "They are in love. Fuck the war."
> That now seems to me more ironic. Hollywood love is not an effective
> anti-war strategy. Connect with AN ARMY OF LOVERS CAN BE BEATEN,
> later. Or how Pirate, who we might figure is our hero at first,
> becomes so sexually/politically manipulable so quickly. How so many of
> these players are sexual marionettes!
>
> I'm not arguing that Pynchon is arguing anything, but read in the
> light of 1970s free love and the political shit going on and the
> uneasy relationships between the sexual revolution and feminism and I
> feel this whole thread of the novel records a pulse we have yet to
> gauge.
>
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 8:30 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Not much happens, but a fair amount gets stated (framed). Roger &
> Jessica are driving east to meet Pointsman and be part of his dognapping
> scheme. But they "want to be together, in bed, at rest, in love" ( tied up
> at the end of the section with another scene of being together, "touches
> and looks, smiles together, curses for parting".   This ending with the
> memorable "they are in love. Fuck the war". )
> > We get the flashback story of their cute meet. Busted bike, slip and
> thighs showing, rom com initial put downs (P has signaled the Hollywood
> lensing) bike smashed and she's " in his power."
> > UTTERLY. (But Roger knows she isn't)
> > Then a rocket lands. The War intrudes.
> > We learn more about Roger ( which we will get to elsewhere)
> > Then we are with First Responders and the bombed.
> > "War's state"
> > Roger is part of The White Visitation and The Home Front is..."fiction
> and a lie".
> > Fuck the war.
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone-
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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