GR translation: It’s not the gentlemanly reflex that . . .

Mike Jing gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
Sun Jun 4 02:53:12 CDT 2017


V302.25-39, P307.11-26   Double integral is also the shape of lovers
curled asleep, which is where Slothrop wishes he were now—all the way
back with Katje, even lost as he might feel again, even more
vulnerable than now—even (because he still honestly misses her),
preserved by accident, in ways he can’t help seeing, accident whose
own much colder honesty each lover has only the other to protect him
from. . . . Could he live like that? Would They ever agree to let him
and Katje live like that? He’s had nothing to say to anyone about her.
It’s not the gentlemanly reflex that made him edit, switch names,
insert fantasies into the yarns he spun for Tantivy back in the
ACHTUNG office, so much as the primitive fear of having a soul
captured by a likeness of image or by a name. . . . He wants to
preserve what he can of her from Their several entropies, from Their
softsoaping and Their money: maybe he thinks that if he can do it for
her he can also do it for himself . . . although that’s awful close to
nobility for Slothrop and The Penis He Thought Was His Own.

As I understand it, when Slothrop was telling stories to Tantivy back
in the ACHTUNG office, he edited the narrative by switching names and
inserting fantasies, and that was due to a "gentlemanly reflex" . But
now with Katje, it's something quite different. Am I getting this
right?
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