into the oven: ch summary 94-116

Tue Jun 21 09:43:31 CDT 2016

YES, I shout to "energized boredom"...which can also be seen---via *Life
Against Death* for one way---as
Boredom = living with a death wish within a life force, so to say in
Psychology 201 and Wielding the Death Wish
= the Life Force as Murder and Suicide against the Other, (again, to be
simplistic via linearity of language, of course).

Which is why an artist's wonderful use of a fairytale, of other old
archetypal stories we sometimes call myths
says it so much better because all-enveloping.

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> 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/?listpynchon-l
>
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