Line in Vineland on "Unspeakable"

[Hübschräuber]

Usually, the Unspeakable is below the surface...

The title of Thomas Merton's collection of essay "Raids on the Unspeakable" (1966) comes to mind, which was inspired by T.S. Eliot's description of poetry in "East Coker" as a "raid on the inarticulate".  

https://merton.org/ITMS/Seasonal/36/36-4Labrie.pdf

I only know Merton through Jim Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable" (2008).

Douglass writes:

-- "The Unspeakable" is a term Thomas Merton coined at the heart of the sixties after JFK’s assassination—in the
midst of the escalating Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, and the further assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin
Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. In each of those soul-shaking events Merton sensed an evil whose depth
and deceit seemed to go beyond the capacity of words to describe.

"One of the awful facts of our age," Merton wrote in 1965, "is the evidence that [the world] is stricken indeed,
stricken to the very core of its being by the presence of the Unspeakable." The Vietnam War, the race to a
global war, and the interlocking murders of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy
were all signs of the Unspeakable. It remains deeply present in our world. As Merton warned, "Those who are at
present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under
this particular aspect: as the nest of the Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see."
When we become more deeply human, as Merton understood the process, the wellspring of our compassion
moves us to confront the Unspeakable. --

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/index.pdf







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mack devon <mackdevon74 at gmail.com> schrieb am Dienstag, 20. Januar 2026 um 18:04:

> Page 174 I've been stuck on for a little while. The book normally stays
> pretty literal with its depictions, oftentimes getting a bit tricky with
> what to take as metaphor or not. This is my 2nd read-through, I must not
> have thought too much of this my first time around. Anyways, around early
> page 174, after the Thanatoid introduction and DL & Takeshi explore
> their village, a paragraph pops up that I'm still confused with.
> 
> With a little context:
> 
> "Yep, one foolish mistake, now I'm payin' it off for the rest of my life."
> 
> "Only for the rest of mine, angel!" as up out of a calm and sunny ocean
> the killer sub Unspeakable briefly poked its periscope, eyeballed their
> vessel, ascertained that it was not the Love Boat, and withdrew. But they
> were learning, together, slowly, how to take evasive action, and at the
> moment it was down through an austere maze of Shade Creek alleyways and
> vacant lots for an extended breakfast and another day's business.
> 
> 
> Now, I've got a couple guesses as to this Unspeakable passage, as I'm
> almost certain it's not meant to be taken literally (unless in reference to
> the men after Takeshi currently spying...but that's way off it seems.)
> There's a very likely chance this is not in reference to an actual Killer
> Sub on the prowl.
> 
> 
> 1. Could this be a classic Pynchon erection joke meant to reference
> Takeshi's lust towards DL being unfulfilled due to her lack of desire & her
> contract? The Unspeakable being The Unspeakable Erection, poking out, and
> withdrawing when not encountering a Love Boat. I feel like there might be
> some old-school slang for Unspeakable/unmentionable wrt a penis, but I'm
> too young to know. (This is the most likely option to me.)
> 
> 2. Could this be just a strange reference to Thanatoids spying on the duo,
> noticing that they aren't in love, but rather that they're truly partners?
> (Very unlikely, just made up to not have to 100% align myself with Erection
> Theory.)
> 
> 
> This is my first post here, I wanted to discuss this topic as I haven't
> seen these lines discussed anywhere, I hope I formatted this well enough.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l