BtZ42 Section 6: Roger Mexico

Tue Apr 26 11:52:56 CDT 2016

The atom bomb testing site is New Mexico - a very different connotation than Mexico. I'm inclined to agree with Mark that Pynchon just had a fondness for the country and is perhaps signaling to us that Roger Mexico, would-be dognapper though he may be, is a good guy.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Michel <bulb at vheissu.net>
>Sent: Apr 26, 2016 3:07 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: BtZ42 Section 6: Roger Mexico
>
>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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