48-54 The Problem of the Pavlovian Penis

Fri May 6 09:30:48 CDT 2016

Funny, PP-Pavlovian Penis, Pirate Prentice, P Pointsman.

On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> www.innergroovemusic.com
>
>

-- 
www.innergroovemusic.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160506/5271b262/attachment.html>