48-54 The Problem of the Pavlovian Penis

Fri May 6 09:27:43 CDT 2016

Just to be clear, my point was that the "children" represent rebirth, not
that PP and KS think of the patients as children, but that is not a bad
idea, either.

On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 10:21 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fowler is divided on the literalness of Pointsman's Humbert Humbertism
> lust.....he ultimately thinks the bed sheets bit is
> probably to be taken straight "as there is 'no contradiction' of that
> elsewhere in the text"......room for interpretation, obviously.
>
> On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 10:11 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>>  I am re-reading and see that my first take was naive. It is  probable
>> that there are no actual children in St. Veronica’s. What Keith is sayng
>> makes much better sense. The metaphor is repeated several times and I took
>> it literally. Clearly Spectro and Pointsman think of the patients as
>> children, PP to such a degree that they inspire pedophiliac Pavlovian
>> fantasies:
>>
>> “How Pointsman lusts after them, pretty children. Those drab undershorts
>> of his are full to bursting with need humorlessly, worldly to use their
>> innocence, to write on them new words of himself, his own brown Realpolitik
>> dreams, some psychic prostate ever in aching love promised, ah hinted but
>> till now . . . how seductively they lie ranked in their iron bedsteads,
>> their virginal sheets, the darlings so artlessly erotic. . . .”
>>
>> This passage goes well with my chapter title. Again and again Pynchon is
>> showing how  lusts transform from sex to personal and institutional
>> aggression. The worst we can say about Slothrop is that he is having a
>> windfall of sex with lonely, horny  English women. If more is actually
>> projected by his arousal than that, it is the degree to which he has been
>> made the tool of other lusts. He himself is distrustful of these larger
>> erections, is trying to break from the ultimate Calvinist controller of
>> destinies, master of restraint and judgement, chooser of sacred seed. The
>> English girls, even if some are fantasies, are helping. The new map of the
>> heavens he is building has a feminine face.
>>    Pointsman, or PP#1, and Prentice, or PP#2, have both redirected their
>> need for love and sex to align their lusts with power and control; they
>> want to be the practical earthly version of Slothrop’s Lord of Hosts.
>> PP#1, the director/philosopher/experimentor, wants to write his name into
>> history and join the immortals of his cult,  and PP#2, the
>> agent/dream-rider, wants to retire in style with the cozy and private elite.
>>
>>
>> Excerpt From: Thomas Pynchon. “Gravity's Rainbow.” iBooks.
>> https://itun.es/us/7vp3F.l”
>>
>> Excerpt From: Thomas Pynchon. “Gravity's Rainbow.” iBooks.
>> https://itun.es/us/7vp3F.l
>> > On May 6, 2016, at 8:40 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Is St. Veronica's taking in children for experiments? I took it that
>> the "new children" referred to on pg 50 refers to a kind of rebirth as a
>> result of treatment, and the following scene of the bus station, etc. as a
>> colorful fantasy about Pointsman's search for new subjects. It plays on a
>> sexual theme, which makes it, in a way, even more perverse.
>> >
>> > Www.innergroovemusic.com
>> >
>> > On May 6, 2016, at 6:33 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I like that joke perception. I also like the gratuitous fox joke. 'Try
>> not to think about a fox as you run three times around
>> >> the building."..haha....why does P play on that old joke? 1) plays
>> with the mentioned laws of contradiction of Pavlov, however we are to
>> understand them? 2) plays with the return of the repressed notion in a
>> quotidian jokey way? What we are told to repress we simply can't. (Return
>> of the Repressed might have larger meanings within GR (and other works, esp
>> AtD again, maybe Vineland?)) 3) is sort of a joke about the impossibility
>> of absolute conditioning despite everything? about some inherent human
>> freedom to oppose no matter the conditioning? I can link speculatively
>> albeit loosely about the Epilogue of 1984. I think of Wm James wrestling
>> with his scientific/philosophical depression over the possibility that he
>> has no free will, his life, all life, is determined inevitably. He breaks
>> out of his depression by believing that his sure act of free will will be
>> to believe in free will. (a mental health preserving kind of Carteesian
>> move, so to analogize).
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 10:45 AM, kelber at mindspring.com <
>> kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >> Don't have the book with me right now, but isn't there some mention of
>> a fast or running fox? So Pynchon is setting up a joke about the quick
>> brown fox jumping over the lazy ( Pavlovian) dog.
>> >>
>> >> Laura
>> >>
>> >> Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Kevin Spectro- a spectral presence sitting in the annulus( technologic
>> ring) of ( mysterious) night , holder of Book, manager of experimental
>> subjects with little apparent choice( like Von Braun’s slaves?), leader in
>> the of cult of Pavlov, despiser of ethical restrictions,upholder of
>> scientific method, despiser of “old” order, spiking Foxes with painkiller,
>> withholding them from Pointsman’s avarice/lust, "not the devil” are you?”,
>> destined for death and destruction via V2 with St. Veronica’s and therefor
>> identified with the rocket( nuclear weapon) as “a ghost in the sky".
>> >>
>> >> Why call patients Fox? In Japan fox is trickster, in england object of
>> hunt, in 70s sexy woman. But why a predator for a patient that seems more
>> prey?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> > On May 5, 2016, at 7:48 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >  please feel free to jump in as you will, p-listers.
>> >> >
>> >> > To St. Veronica's hospital where Pointsman and Spectro (also a
>> Pavlovian scientist) discuss Pointsman’s desire to have access to
>> experiment with Slothrop as subject and we find with full clarity that
>> Slothrop is somehow predicting the location and time of the fall of the
>> rockets with his map of erections. Spectro says it can't be experimentally
>> justified because there is just one subject. They wonder how Slothrop's
>> predictive ability works, comparing phenoma of erection then rocket strike
>> to  the arrival of a rocket first,  and then the rocket sound. We find
>> Slothrop was also patient/ experimental subject of Laszlo Jamf. Pointsman
>> wants same access to human subjects, reflecting Nazi medical experiments
>> and known western experiments.
>> >> > The "hospital' takes in children, apparently survivors of bomb
>> blasts etc. Some odd "therapy" is hinted at, possibly shock therapy. It is
>> said that a thousand children are about to leave. Alive? To go where?)
>> >> >
>> >> > note:
>> >> > St. Veronica is a Catholic legend of a woman who offers Jesus a
>> cloth to wipe his face on the way to calvary and the cloth bears the image(
>> Ver I can = true image in Latin) of his face. This may be related to shroud
>> of Turin but very sketchy what the source is. The idea though is an image
>> showing the utmost in suffering and abuse born in the face of Jesus. It is
>> interesting that Jesus face is traditionally almost hermaphroditic apart
>> from the beard so both the feminine and masculine are conveyed.  In the
>> novel St Veronica's carries a dominant sense of misery, sounds of wailing
>> reminiscent of the screaming at start of novel- science in the service of
>> scrying bones.-
>> >> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>> >>
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >>
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>

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