BtZ42 pages 116-121

[Joseph Tracy]

So Slothrop thinks the ‘ coercions and vast deals' that might have given him a section 8 release were held up deep into his own past in some kind of cause effect chain like the butcher/rope/fire/water/ox/dog… and maybe he could have fed the cow and started the chain that would satisfy the section 8 standard. 

 He knows he wasn’t quite willing to go far enough to lose  the integrity that he still has. My reading is that there is in TS a deep level of rebellion/noncooperation with authorities that shows up in the  Kenosha Kid chapter having to do with his hanging on to the truth that is being told in music and for him in Jazz, and perhaps also in the effects of Marijuana. There is another aspect of the  old woman and the pig story. Pynchon tends to use meat eating as a moral compromise that always produces other compromises. Slothrop’s sense of identification with pigs fits with P’s distate for meat consumption and also indicates a strong rejection of cultural norms. In this chapter as in others I feel the idea of Slothrop as a person driven by unfounded  paranoia breaks down. He is neither delusional nor unwilling to compromise. He is simply unable to easily change what he is, a fairly astute observer of himself and his situation.  He is idealistic enough to take soldierly risks in a war with fascism but is unwilling to be served up ike pork ribs or bacon breakfast to a fellow in the war effort  l.
  The reader knows what Slothrop only suspects- that he is being studied like a lab animal and has every reason to be wary. The reader knows that key Allied scientists are only a half- step away from Nazi scientists in regard for human dignity and law. The reader also knows that there is a sytem of preterite status and authoritarianmism that is far older and more pervasive in human history than the axis powers,

Further we know from the previous chapter that in the world of the novel the entire war effort is not a war with fascism but that  “the real business of the War  is buying and selling. …” and when a little further we read that Jewish lives, Like cigarettes and sex, are negotiable in the resulting markets we know also that the Allies suppressed the “ negotiable information”  that the Nazis were engaged in the industrial scale murder of European Jews.  

How do people respond to information that brings the dominant mythos and trusted sources of information into question, that shatters the sacred, twists and unmakes the made, fucks the holy, rapes the innocent, throws the lover into the flames? This seems to me a sense of the intensity with which the question haunts and drives the lives of characters who are most emotionally engaging like Katje, Slothrop, Mexico, Pirate, Pudding, Franz, Ilse and Leni Pokler, Enzian,  Bianca Erdmann. 













> On Jun 30, 2016, at 8:49 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> Overlaps, refrains, improvisation. The old woman with the pig story is about appetite, technology and going from and to home: her money is crooked , her hunger is fatty meat, her dilemna in retrieving domestic tanquility( the kind  with meat) is technical and humorously complex and involves more crookedness. The old woman/witch/candy story is about appetite, technology, and the precariousness of home that is surveilled and threatened by war and loss. 
> I didn’t recall the scene of TS’s ancestor driving a pig.  Reference anyone?
> The fairy tale pig woman seems to represent resilience and determination of ordinary people in getting ordinary comforts but also seems to indicate how extraordinarily complex  and perhaps morally iffy animal husbandry can get. The pig choice is clearly deliberate as TS’s identification with pigs becomes a major theme.  One pig theme is the dual role pigs have of wildness and domestication. Domestication has the implication of comfort and safety, but not for the pig. 
> 
> The candies place the technology and complexity in the appetite itself. There seems to be question lurking about imperial appetites, perhaps the chemistry based creation of new and strange appetites.
> 
> 
>> On Jun 29, 2016, at 1:23 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>> e90c      —=============================p
>> 
>> More witchery and fairy tale stuff:
>> 
>> "The old woman's arrangement for getting the pig home over the stile." Weisenberger refers us to The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence, via Clouston, and onward, back to the Kabala and the number ten. The fable, recounted, seems to be out wartime bureaucracy, on a superficial level (Slothrop dealing with the bureaucracy of the White Visitation), but it's a gruesome tale of murder and coercion driven by an old woman/witch who's driving a pig along, much as Tyrone's ancestor did.
>> 
>> "'You came back! Ah, Tyrone, you're back', a tear or two …" Does anyone else read this as a little Wizard-of-Oz-like? Darlene/Dorothy, with her basket, soon to return to the upstairs room of  Mrs. Quoad, the self-described witch.
>> 
>> This section details the start of Tyrone's paranoia. He senses he's being followed (you kind of wonder why Pointsman and Co. didn't do that immediately, instead of altering the field experiment by putting him in a lab). Whoever's watching gets an instant payoff - erection coincides with V-2. Bingo!
>> 
>> Laura
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Eileen Pierce 
>>> Sent: Jun 28, 2016 6:29 AM
>>> To: pynchon -l 
>>> Cc: Eileen Pierce 
>>> Subject: BtZ42 pages 116-121
>>> 
>>> They’ve cut Slothrop loose again, he wanders, seeking places the followers might not follow. Released from St. Veronica’s, he is reunited with Darlene from St. Veronica's. Then tea and candies with Mrs. Quoad. (Ha!)
>>> 
>>> "The Meggezone is like being belted in the head with a Swiss Alp. Menthol icicles immediately begin to grow from the roof of Slothrop’s mouth. Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alveolar clusters in his lungs. It hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive-drab T-shirt. Benzoin vapors seep into his brain. His head floats in a halo of ice.” (Wow.)
>>> 
>>> Slothrop in bed with Darlene, “hunting across the zero between waking and sleep”. Mrs. Quoad is in the parlor dreaming of the King’s hand on her neck. (Huh?) Rocket and erection. All the while, watched from behind the orange shade.
>>> 
>>> Thank you p-listers for this fascinating group read. I look forward to reading your thoughts on this section. Enjoy the day! e
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Eileen Pierce
>>> 608-512-6451
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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