BtZ42 Section 6: Roger Mexico

[Michel]

Patrick Hurley, Pynchon's Character Names, page 104:

"The name is something of an enigma. Tololyan [sic] offers that the name 
may have been suggested by "Shell Mex House"(46) or the atomic bomb 
testing site of Mexico (67 note 9). It may be, considering the 
oft-quoted exchange with Pointsman in which Mexico suggests rejecting 
sterile assumptions and junking cause and effect the Mexico represents 
"the South," often thought of as an emotional rejection of the cold 
rationality of the North. This could tie in with the first name in its 
sense of "message received." Roger is also slang for "to have sexual 
intercourse with" (AH4); this reading could be supported by the fact 
that Roger and Jessica's relationship is purely sexual."

Tololyan is a reference to his article in Clerc's; AH 4 refers to the 
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Dictionary.

---
Michel

On 2016-04-25 21:29, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Mexico is where Pynchon supposedly fled to---and fled from getting his
> picture taken---after V. was published. as I believe I wrote, I think
> Mexico is, in some complicit sense, the science participator in, like
> but not like the scientist/engineers, Pointsman so far,
> that are the destructive determinists.
> 
> He helps Pointsman round up the dog. Without his dogs, the Pavlovian
> is not a true scientist in his results. He feels enthusiasm at handing
> off the film of Slothrop.
> 
> He is the complicit one, yet in love genuinely.
> 
> Pynchon might have felt very complicit as a scientific writer within
> Boeing, some say with surety. Just saying'.
> 
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 2:12 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
>> Does anyone have any theories about Roger's last name? What,
>> exactly, is Mexican, even, or especially, in a stereotypical sense,
>> about this uptight, rule-following statistician? Later he has a
>> pathetic moment of rebellion. But here he's willing to help
>> Pointsman capture a hapless dog. And statistics, while it occupies
>> the place between one and zero, is anything but warm and emotional
>> (assuming that's the "southern" counterpoint).
>> 
>> Laura
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>> Sent: Apr 25, 2016 5:24 AM
>> To: Mark Kohut , Joseph Tracy
>> Cc: P-list List
>> Subject: Re: BtZ42 Section 6: Roger Mexico
>> 
>> On 24.04.2016 13:15, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> 
>> Within GR, I most see Roger the statistician as the marker of
>> probabilities.
>> Pointsman is the scientific determinist .
>> 
>> Math - think also the Quaternionists in AtD and VL's Weed Atman - is
>> the non-determinist (and thus 'good') science in Pynchon's world,
>> right?
>> 
>> With its southy aroma, the name "Mexico" stands in direct opposition
>> to the name "Pointsman".
>> 
>> Then again, what's more determinist than --- an algorithm?
>> 
>> Slothrop is the possibility ( or not) of freedom from.
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Apr 23, 2016, at 10:07 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Good stuff.Statistics are weird in that they seem so scientific and
>> are so easily ignored by just about everyone in favor of something
>> like "gusts of emotion".
>> 
>> On Apr 22, 2016, at 10:05 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Roger the statistician: "By the time one has pulled one’s nth
>> victim or part of a victim free of one’s nth pile of rubble, he
>> told her once, angry, weary, it has ceased to be that personal . . .
>> the value of n may be different for each of us, but I’m sorry:
>> sooner or later . . ." (p. 41).
>> 
>> Still in a Dylan Thomas mood, I'm hearing here "After the first
>> death, there is no other."
>> 
>> 
> https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/refusal-mourn-death-fire-child-london
>> 
>> 
>> Seen from one angle (sometimes but not always Jessica's), Roger is
>> almost as inhuman(e)ly odd and chill as his colleagues. Seen from
>> another (sometimes but not always Pointsman's), he is a threatening
>> wild card, given to probabilities and the acceptance of random
>> fluctuations rather than on-off (flip-flop in V.?), mechanistic
>> certainties and strict causality.
>> 
>> Statistics and probability theory themselves have Janus faces. Yes,
>> they strip experience to bare chill manipulable numbers: that
>> certainly seems bad. But yes, they *also* strip away preconception
>> and anecdotal impression and bias to reveal what experience actually
>> *is* over broader scales of time, space, and number than any one of
>> us can grasp -- which is kinda good if you want to stop an epidemic
>> (or a traditional but ineffective/harmful therapy), forestall a
>> famine, anticipate global warming, etc.
>> 
>> CF. my earlier remarks on P.M.S. Blackett, "running a war on gusts
>> of emotion," and both the V-weapons and Allied area bombing as
>> examples of the latter. From one angle, we can see both programs as
>> embodiments of implacable science / technology / industry... but had
>> they really been evaluated by chill statistics, rather than as
>> "oboy, here's a new way to hurt the enemy," neither would have been
>> pursued.
>> 
>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 6:33 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> Statistician. ( we will learn of his belief in the range between
>> zero and one. Meanings here?)
>> Works for The White Visitation. " The Dour Young Man of.."
>> Doesn't get on with his colleagues
>> Doesn't understand Pavlovians, but has to help Pointsman.
>> Unappealing looks ( accepts jabs about) seemingly youthful looking.
>> Pirate sez he's been euchred into a Byzantine exercise of
>> psychological warfare conducted by The White Visitation. His "
>> enthusiasm grows" with each film delivery from Bloat. (Section 5)
>> 
>> " Never a prophetic dream, no telepathic messages, never touched The
>> Other World directly"
>> YET, he tells us of his first experience of " magic" : " data he
>> can't argue away" ...." The feeling of actually being joined" w
>> Jessica. IN love.
>> 
>> Comments wanted.
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad-
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> 
>> -
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