BtZ42 - The Book

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Yet still. Laura's thesis that The Book is "given a mystically ritual 
connotation by its rotation among the various personalities of the White 
Visitation" seems to be rather confirmed than falsified by the episode 
you're quoting from. This social practice respectively context is as 
important as the source text itself. There are Pointsman's marginalia, 
the mysterious origin of the copy, the secrecy of its use, the 
occasionally religious character of the debates - "'Pierre Janet --- 
sometimes the man talked like an Oriental mystic. (...)'/'I don't want 
to get into a religious debate with you (...), but I wonder ...'" (p. 
88) -, plus the motto of the episode, making fun of authentic sources in 
general:

"Better behave yourself or we'll send you back to Dr. Jamf!

When Jamf conditioned /him/, he threw away the stimulus.

Looks like Dr. Jamf's been by to see /your/ little thing today, hasn't he?

      --- /Neil Nosepicker's Book of 50,000 Insults/,
                                 §6.72, 'Awful Offspring,'
                                 The Nayland Smith Press,
                                 Cambridge (Mass.), 1933"

(p. 83, Picador/Viking)

And then Pavlov died in 1936, while the action here takes place in 1944. 
In the meantime, science, due to the war, started to become big science. 
With the rise of the Rocket, and its societal implications 
("Raketenstadt"), the rules of research are changing: Roger "feels the 
foundation of that discipline [statistics] trembling, a bit now, deeper 
than oddity ought to drive. Odd, odd, odd---think of the word: such 
white finality in its closing clap of tongue. It implies moving past the 
tongue-stop---beyond the zero---and into the other realm. Of course you 
don't move past. But you do realize, intellectually, that's how you 
/ought/ to be moving." (p. 85). And Ivan Pavlov - "(h)e was realistic 
enough not to expect it [the true mechanical explanation] in his 
lifetime. Or in several lifetimes more. But his hope was for a long 
chain of better and better approximations" (p. 89) - appears, all of 
sudden, pretty outmoded in the shining new light of Raketenstadt.

So yes, Weisenburger is correct in identifying The Book as volume 2 of 
Pavlov's lectures on conditioned reflexes. But his characterization of 
the involved social practice as "having no particular purpose" and "a 
bit of melodrama from the narrator" raises doubts whether he really 
thought the issue through. To identify a source is not the same as 
understanding its use by the author. And of course, The Book (note the 
caps!) does also refer to the Bible. The missing link here is "shit, 
money, and the Word" (p. 28) ...


On 27.04.2016 09:21, Monte Davis wrote:
>
> 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 
> <mailto: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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