BTZ42: The Randomness of Slothrop's Sexual Visitations

[Mike Jing]

I don't think you can say that "Mexico has more or less predicted his
own map". Statistics can only predict the distribution, i.e. "how many
squares will get none, how many one, two, three, and so on", but it
can't tell you exactly which square will get how many, and certainly
not the actual points of strike of the rockets.

On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 8:29 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> But okay, so let's say Slothrop's map does actually coincide with Mexico's.
>
> What about the fact that Mexico has more or less predicted his own map? "a
> classical Poisson distribution, quietly neatly sifting among the squares
> exactly as it should...growing to its predicted shape." (57)
>
> Does this mean that the locations of Slothrop's sexual encounters follow the
> same random (but semi-predicted) pattern of the Poisson distribution?
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 7:25 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Joseph says elsewhere that there is good reason to believe Slothrop's map
>> is "phenomenologically predictive."
>>
>> I too think that there is probably, in the 'real world' of the novel, an
>> actual relationship between Slothrop's sexual encounters and later rocket
>> strikes to the same location. Though I remember Monte speculating about that
>> being an assumption we readers are maybe too fast to make. I can't remember
>> if he (Monte: if you) ever came up with anything that seemed conclusive.
>>
>> The language on p. 87 seems to have a bit of deliberate bureaucratic
>> vagueness:
>>
>> "the two images, girl-stars and rocket-strike circles, demonstrated to
>> coincide."
>>
>> Also we can say that >50% of the sexual encounters pre-date the rocket
>> strikes:
>>
>> "Helpfully, Slothrop has dated most of his stars. A star always comes
>> before its corresponding rocket strike."
>>
>> This assumes that A) the dates on the stars are actually intended (by
>> Slothrop) to signify the dates Slothrop boned someone in that particular
>> location, and B) that Slothrop is accurate with the dates.
>>
>> I'm not so sure that both of those assumptions are safe to make.
>>
>> If Slothrop is an obsessive (as his MMPI tells us on p. 92, at least
>> according to Pointsman) then wouldn't he date all the stars?
>>
>> Does that kind of attention to detail sound like the Slothrop we
>> eventually get to know? Does fixation on time--and the ability to remember
>> the date with accuracy--sound like the Slothrop we know? He of the
>> scattering, diminishing personal density, him of the narrow present ("It may
>> get to where you’re having trouble remembering what you were doing five
>> minutes ago, or even—as Slothrop now—what you’re doing here")
>>
>> Then again, we mostly know the Slothrop that comes after the sexual
>> encounters the map might reveal.
>>
>> Maybe Slothrop is still iffy with the dates, which might explain the
>> variable lag time (between two and ten days).
>>
>> I'm not certain about those being reasonable assumptions but for the sake
>> of preserving some of the book's other, essential mysteries, and until
>> proven otherwise, I think there is a real correspondence between the maps.
>> And Slothrop's probably does pre-date Mexico's.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I think this is one obvious idea: Perhaps, in union with another person,
>> Slothrop achieves a moment of such radical expansion, transcendence, that he
>> creates a phenomenon outside the normal forward-moving linearity of the way
>> most humans perceive time (thus enabling, according to Pointsman's theory, a
>> modification of the normal order of cause-and-effect).
>>
>> Pointsman, p. 91: "There are no 'other angles.' There is only
>> forward--into it--or backward."
>>
>> This binary sounds particularly sexual to me, though if that's the case, I
>> think Pointsman--demonstrated to be a bit alien to the animal actualities of
>> human sex--makes a mistake here with the word or. With sex--hopefully--there
>> is forward and backward.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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