BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): at the window while he sleeps

[Mark Kohut]

Monte writes:
58.24: "Pointsman’s... his... a bleakness whenever she meets him.
Scientist-neutrality." How does that differ from Roger's commitment to the
data and only the data about rocketfalls, which was only recently "cheap
cynicism"...? Or is Roger's version of neutrality less creepy to her
*because* it makes him uncomfortable even as he insists on it? NB he
repeatedly, parodically *plays* the mad scientist in exchanges with her. If
I didn't know that Pynchon fears and condemns science like all good
creative souls, I'd think there's some quite interesting ambivalence being
modeled here.

There IS a good mini-essay here on science and Pynchon in GR), which Monte
might write. Focussing leads me to offer
THIS possible reading: Roger believes that there might be SOMETHING
("magic") beyond the "scientific", beyond the measurement of material
reality. ( One might be reminded of Oedipa's "something beyond the visible"
or not).

Pointsman has no such belief. His science-neutrality is really a
positivistic belief in nothing but science.


On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> end of P. 57 -> P. 58
>
> Foxes and dogs again, among the latter a painted pointer "alerted by the
> eternal scent, the explosion over his head always just about to come." Good
> boy, Tyrone!
>
> http://www.old-print.com/mas_assets/full3/J5141807/J5141807448.jpg
>
> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/43/02/f0/4302f06cbc44b3b2e6fbc371f51b2bce.jpg
>
>
> What makes these images -- standard English fare at the time  for exurban
> bourgeois as well as country-house aristocracy -- "even more autumnal,
> necropolitical, than prewar hopes"..? This section has reminded us before
> and will remind us again that Roger & Jessica's evasion  of the war is
> temporary and precarious -- but here we're told that golden autumnal
> meadows are *becoming* a City of the Dead (necropolis). Just a _memento
> mori_ for the lovers, for a nostalgic English self-image? More?
>
> 58.11-15: something blocks Roger's speech, and "how does she know... so
> exactly what Roger meant to say?" (Reinforcing 56.37's "Roger really wants
> other people to know what he’s talking about. Jessica understands that.") A
> hug, melting into arousal for both, is more than a consolation prize for
> "failure to communicate" -- it *is* communication, "mind-to-mind."
>
> 58.16 brings us back to the framing night of winter solstice. Perhaps the
> clinch just above was earlier the same night -- the section began with "pillows
> in front of the fire. Roger’s clothing... scattered all about." Or perhaps
> all their nights here are one, off the timeline and off the books.
>
> 58.24: "Pointsman’s... his... a bleakness whenever she meets him.
> Scientist-neutrality." How does that differ from Roger's commitment to the
> data and only the data about rocketfalls, which was only recently "cheap
> cynicism"...? Or is Roger's version of neutrality less creepy to her
> *because* it makes him uncomfortable even as he insists on it? NB he
> repeatedly, parodically *plays* the mad scientist in exchanges with her. If
> I didn't know that Pynchon fears and condemns science like all good
> creative souls, I'd think there's some quite interesting ambivalence being
> modeled here.
>
> 58.33: "And the people who might have been asleep in the empty houses
> here . .., are they dreaming of cities that shine all over with lamps at
> night, of Christmases seen again from the vantage of children and not of
> sheep huddled so vulnerable on their bare hillside, so bleached by the
> Star’s awful radiance?"
> Spoilers be damned, this is a sweet foretaste of the Advent evensong
> coming up three nights from now (p. 127)
>
>
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