into the oven: ch summary 94-116

[Joseph Tracy]

I like the paraphrase of those Fowler comments. This process of exploring the elusivenes, complexity of motivation is happening with several characters. Is a consistent theme simultaneous with and often seemingly contrasted with the attempt to isolate cause and effect. One of the things that shows up in Blicero and other leading antagonists of Pynchon novels is a kind of energized boredom. They have done it all and their appetites and energy turns to playing God, controlling others’ destinies, expanding their dominion, killing otherness. These traits are hardly unique to the wicked and powerful, but they are for most people held in check by the balance of social power, or a conscious rejection and embrace of alternate life pursuits. They take on a different quality and influence for those who achieve power, playing themselves out in more dangerous  forms. 

> On Jun 21, 2016, at 7:37 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Yes, this chapter is a doozy, all right. So full of......thematic stuff.
> 
> I often wonder how TRP kept the complexity of GR in mind as he wrote it. 
> Yes, those engineering sheets and intense notes and the mind of a genius.
> 
> More locally, I wonder about him keeping the density of this chapter in mind. it is
> a doozy full of major and minor bits of so many of this thematic threads. I have
> now read it three times within months and twice within weeks and still have to
> fish around in it for more understanding---and I find already-forgotten stuff. 
> 
> There is the heart of it--a presentation of the worst evil, the heart of darkness, an attempt
> to show the heart of Nazism but as Joseph and others say, how such "nazism' has lived elsewhere.
> An embrace of death so total that it must destroy Otherness as well. 
> 
> Fowler sez something like pynchon does not try to show anything literal like motivation but instead
> to show something beyond 'motivation'--beyond cause & effect, let's say--something that tries to
> show the Absolutely Irrational caught in enacting the Absolutely Irrational and Absolutely Incomprehensible
> by regular folk and regular readers. 
> 
> But then so much more. 
> (to come)
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Here is my working chapter summary. This chapter is a doozy so let me know if you think something should be added or subtracted.
> 
> ++++++++14  94-116
> Katje- from Katerina-from Greek saint Aikaterinē; Greek name probably from Hecate( Goddess of underworld, death, witchcraft) later Greek adj.  Katharos came to mean pure. (neither camera nor P tells us which(  witch or pure spirit) is more apt)
> Weissmann- White man, wise man;  Dominus- lord, dominate;   Blicero- Bliss Zero, bliss hero. bliss ero (herero)
> Gottfried-possible roots: 1) geut- to pour(molten metal) tribes who are pourers of metal, forgers of men 2) god- god or good  frid - peace, protection
> 
> Beautiful, slender, athletic blonde woman named Katje enters banana house to find Osbie Feel(?) preparing amanita mushrooms like cookies in oven, she stares into oven and oven stimulates memories of her sexual servitude together with her homosexual compatriot Gottfried, both under Blicero's command. Blicero is the head of Nazi  rocket program. Their relations are compared to hansel(Gottfried) gretel ( Katje) and the witch( witch, cannibal, predator, sorcerer)(Blicero)  she dreams of shoving blicero into the kinderoven,and somewhere we slip into the memories and musings of Blicero, musings about Rilke's duino elegies with focus on the flame( the oven) which he longs for, his fears of Katje's betrayal,  and memories of his time in Southwest Africa amid hereroes, particularly of his native lover. He thinks of his longing for the oven which he refers to as his Destiny ( If the oven represents the power base of the militarized(friends vs enemies)  state, does that conception imply a natural gravitation to extinction?) He is sorry for the children ( soldiers, believers,followers) who see the possibility of freedom in the flame/oven/triumph of will/extinction-of-enemies . His will is waning and only his sexual addictions and their realness of skin, pleasure, and pain keeps him going toward his destiny.
> 
> WhiteMan/ Weissmann/ Dominus Blicero's love of language(elegies) is a kind of Abulafian Kabbalistic belief in the magic powers of words and ritual incantation to become a messianic vessel of divine light, his role seemingly to be one of judgement and annihilation. ( Is he a god or is he a superman who has overthrown God and is bored, empty, ready to overthrow man?)
> 
> This idea is reinforced by memory of Herero Lover who wants to fuck while  invoking (blaspheming in B's words) the Holy Name ( the Herero name for God).  We move into the mind of Gottfried, foolishly thinking he is magically protected as Hansel in story, being conditioned (similar to Slothrop) ex: word bitch in certain tone is stimulus, erection conditioned response. chapter full of such Pavlovian arrangements. Gottfried is focused on Katje's escape which leads us back to Katje in Banana house speaking with PP. Katje's flight  disgusts dutch agent (Wim)she wonders if what she has done has any value to redeem her or at least to trade on the war market. (quote about war as markets pg 107)PP wonders why no info on location of rocket launches, house in woods, wonders if he knows Katje, recalls meeting by windmill( important image, repeated later) called The Angel. PP offers K asylum in White Visitation. Conversation OsF and PP PP says sometimes a person just quits the game, perhaps so with Katje. Katje says she's not PP's responsibility; PP disagrees. She feels blood desire to join inseparable, we find her forbear was Van Der Groov who killed Dodoe birds on Mauritius, a dutch colony that only lasted one lifetime but wiped out dodoes and ebony trees, colonists crazed with guns, acting like god but disappearing like preterite. FransVDG considers Dodoes' lack of language by which to colonize/co-opt, imagines miracle of Dodoes gathered in sacramental thanks, redeemed by the word. PP and O F( smoking amanita cigs)  sit on roof of banana house watching sunset on Thames below, ask about K; PP says someone can use her in WV. In WV film is being shot by Gerhard Goll of fake schwartzcommando troop activities. At day’s end projector goes down to show film of Katje to Grigori the Octopus.
> 
>  key to below)  f=  plausible fiction( invented narrative that is physically and historically possible) h= history( known historic characters, events, places)  m= mythic/magic (events that are physically implausible as realism or presented more as myth than real)
> 
> This preceding chapter, long and dark, has a nested russian doll structure; we are inside authorial narrative( h),  insideKatje (f), inside a film of Katje( f,f) who is inside banana boy soldier spy house(f),inside psychedelic oven(f,h), inside magic witches hut(m)inside Blicero(f), inside real rocket site(h)inside duino elegies(m,h,f) inside real war with  real holocaust ovens(h) inside fictive colonial history(f,h,m),inside  real colonial history(h)inside the memories of Gottfried(f) and back inside Katje's immediate role in the unfolding story where she meets with Pirate Prentice whose agent she appears to be?, inside Gravity's Rainbow (m,h,f).  " …bigger fishes to bite'm…and so ad infinitum.”   Part of the layering is to emphasize what is unknowable by measurement/observation/film.-
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> 

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l