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

[Monte Davis]

I understand the reflex to have been "a gentleman ( or lady) doesn't tell,"
i.e. does not reveal sexual partners. Now it's animal fear: if he and Katje
could both be nameless, they might escape Their attention and control.

On Jun 4, 2017 3:54 AM, "Mike Jing" <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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?
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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