BtZ42 - The Book

[Monte Davis]

LK> Is there any textual justification for Weisenburger's explanation later
in the book?


pp. 87-88 (Viking):


"Pointsman has been talking about paranoia and the “idea of the opposite.”
He has scribbled in The Book exclamation points and *how true*s all about
the margins of Pavlov’s open letter to Janet concerning the *sentiments
d'emprise*, and of Chapter LV, “An Attempt at a Physiological
Interpretation of Obsessions and of Paranoia”—he can’t help this bit of
rudeness, although the agreement among the seven owners was not to mark up
The Book—it was too valuable for that sort of thing, they’d had to put in a
guinea apiece. It was sold him on the sly, in the dark, during a Luftwaffe
raid (most existing copies had been destroyed in their warehouse early in
the Battle of Britain). Pointsman never even saw the seller’s face, the man
vanishing into the hoarse auditory dawn of the all‑clear, leaving the
doctor and The Book, the dumb sheaf already heating up, moistening in his
tight hand . . . yes it might have been a rare work of erotica, certainly
that coarse hand‑set look to the type . . . the crudities in phrasing, as
if Dr. Horsley Gantt’s odd translation were in cipher, the plaintext
listing shameful delights, criminal transports..."


If there's another book combining that letter to Janet, that Chapter LV
title, that translator, and that history of the first printing, I'm all
ears.

On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 1:09 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Jumping to the end of the section - p. 47:
>
> "Spectro is one of the original seven owners of The Book, and if you ask
> Mr. Pointsman what Book, you'll only get smirked at."
>
> Weisenburger is quick to identify The Book as volume 2 of Pavlov's
> Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes. He adds that the secrecy of rotating the
> book between various owners has no particular purpose, calling it "a bit of
> melodrama from the narrator."
>
> My gut reaction is, fuck off, Weisenburger! Is there any textual
> justification for Weisenburger's explanation later in the book? There's
> certainly none here. It seems way too prosaic and non-Pynchonian an
> interpretation. Have I missed something?
>
> I read The Book as deliberately obscure - an unholy book of (perhaps)lab
> data, meticulously and secretively collected, and given a mystically ritual
> connotation by its rotation among the various personalities of the White
> Visitation.
>
> Laura
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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