Welcome to Week 4. We’re holding pretty steady with something close to 20 people still on the march. Not bad at all… Most of us, me included, are a little bit behind. My current strategy is to catch up by skipping every other word on pages 250-300. We’ll see how that goes.
The comments flew fairly fast and furious last week — 34 of ’em, if you add all three threads together. Thanks for your patience with my monkeying around, thread-wise. In the end, the split thread approach seemed to work pretty well. Let’s try it for one more week and see how that shakes out. It’s all one big experiment, doncha know.
For now, this is the spot to have at it re pages 160-230 (p/v) or so.
Next week: See you at page 278 (penguin/viking) aka 323 (bantam). -CV
This week’s reading was almost a lark. I mean, it had a dark undertone, but it pretty much stuck to one setting, one timeline, and one set of characters. It’s as if Pynchon took pity on us. I expect suffering in the near future, but at the moment I feel tanned and rested after the paranoid holiday at Casino Hermann Goering.
On the topic of this week’s target, book 2 ends on page 278 of my edition. Wouldn’t that be a sensible place to stop?
The German perspective is fascinating me. The people are almost plausible, but Pynchon is riding a slim line between empathetic grotesquerie and simple monstrosity. Isn’t it a bit too easy to make the “enemy” a study in perversity?
Bill wrote: “On the topic of this week’s target, book 2 ends on page 278 of my edition. Wouldn’t that be a sensible place to stop?”
Sounds good — text updated in the entry….
Maybe it’s the donuts, but I *think* I’m getting a better handle on this thing. Thinking about Zoro’s comment from week 1:
“Seems like a major theme here is that humans are compelled to try and conquer uncertainty but inevitably fail.”
That sounds right on to me as of p. 226, except maybe Pynchon’s fear is that we *won’t* fail. There’s a THEM manipulating everything that seems random in his world, even death (as the Plastinated Rib puts it: “The implied question seems to be, Can the tools and methodologies of science be used to control the paranormal?”). Chemistry, engineering, corporate cartels, the War, even the goofy mediums of the White Visitation are exposed as instruments of Synthesis (gathering the disparate under a single molecular law) and Control. The goal (really more like an erotic drive–is that what all the erections are about?) is to make life utterly predictable, like the zero point of the rocket’s arc (p.223) where “something else” takes over and the parabola asserts itself as the predestined shape of descent (p.209).
Problem is, at the end of that symmetrical rainbow there’s this explosion: Apocalypse. It was fun to play God while it lasted, huh?
Is this anywhere on target? Really fun section either way. Roulette anyone? & a mug of champagne for our prescient Cecil!
Rodney: I’ll ponder your idea as I catch up, but it makes sense back in the 170’s.
Hey, does anyone else think the gang at the White Visitation, with their wide ranging mutant capabilities, is kind of like the X-Men? Reminds me of the school in X-Men II the movie (so what? you might ask, and I’m working on that…)
so-called Zoro wrote: “Hey, does anyone else think the gang at the White Visitation, with their wide ranging mutant capabilities, is kind of like the X-Men?”
I was thinking the same thing right at page 147 (penguin) — “What are we to make of Gavin Trefoil, for whose gift there’s not even a name yet?” Kind of like Stan Lee as read by Boris Karloff.
So-called Bill wrote: “It’s as if Pynchon took pity on us. I expect suffering in the near future, but at the moment I feel tanned and rested after the paranoid holiday at Casino Hermann Goering.”
Been reading that section that last two days and yeah, boy, it’s just a blast. As you say, major brain relief. Talking to Rodney K. today we thought it was very b-movie in the best way — like scenes from some lost Roger Corman classic. Good fun….
When is someone going to answer Rodney’s first two questions?
Beats me. I have a hard time just reading Rodney’s big-brained comments without smoke pouring out of my ears.
By the way, I speculated that pain was in the offing, and sure enough, not 10 pages into this week’s reading, there’s a scene involving Brigadier Pudding and…and…well, if you’ve read it, you know, and if you haven’t, you will soon. Ick.
here on the book thread, smoke is pouring out of bill’s ears while on the chat thread he is (very reasonably and generously, i must say) recommending that stragglers be allowed to catch up. conjecture about multiple bills aside, fake and real cecils are certainly running hither and thither. xian has fainted. and this comment is probably in the wrong place. are we marching in the end times of which rodney spoke?
I told Cecil a while back that I was going to try to avoid being overly academic so as not to force an interpretation on anyone. If I blow it, call me on it.
First to Dan on German perversity – Weissman actually first appears in V. during the colonization of Africa. A lot of critics think GR was a section of V. that got out of control. Weissman is largely following through on themes developed there.
Now to Rodney’s “goal of predictability.” That’s certainly in the text. But what of Mexico, who is willing to live in a world of statistical probability and abnormality – for whom “There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.” Yet he is stuck with a pattern that is too orderly.
It cuts both ways.
Dr. Vitz
More historical perspective for those who care. Was curious about the Lubeck connection. First the Angel watching over the RAF pilots, then the “…come fuck me now…” line (hello, retaliation!) on (or around) p. 220 (sorry, I don’t have my book with me now) sent me off to learn more about this town. (Sorry about all those annoying parentheticals.)
Turns out that Lubeck was a small and relatively insignificant Baltic coastal town that was incinerated by one of the first “terror raids” conducted by the RAF. Happened on March 28, 1942. Here’s a quote I found from a bomber commander who was there: “… the main object of the attack was to learn to what extent a first wave of aircraft could guide a second wave to the aiming point by starting a conflagration.” Nice, huh? Clearly what they “learned” from Lubeck they then applied to better known civilian targets like Dresden.
So what’s my point? Hell, I don’t know. But what’s more terrifying? A high-tech rocket that kills unannounced or a squadron of planes dropping big molotov cocktails on your town? Is technology helping devise more efficient ways to kill or simply quicker ways to die?
Smouldering Rib,
Loved your Lubeck stuff (damn! can’t do umlauts). I spent a summer there at language school and saw photos of the flattened city just after the war. The St. Marienkirche is also where Bach went to study organ with Buxtehude as a youth. There’s a cheesy relief commemorating it somewhere in the Church–I think Bach walked the whole way there from someplace insanely far away.
If I understand it right, Lubeck was essentially a psychological not a military target; the Allies bombed it to show Jerry the Vaterland wasn’t all that safe, even for little red-brick Buxtehude-loving Lubeck. So Hitler retaliated with the rockets , a replay of Churchill’s decision to bomb Leipzig or somewhere in 1940 that convinced Hitler to follow through with plans for Operation Sealion, which ended in a tangle of smouldering Messerscmidts in Kent after the Battle of Britain.
Irrelevant P.S. Lubeck was also the hometown of Thomas Mann, which never forgave him for his send-up of the city’s worthies in Buddenbrooks.
Still, that don’t help much w/ the Angel. What the hey? Anyone? Dr. Witz? Bueller? Bueller?
Maybe the Angel was at Lubeck taking notes for Judgment Day?
St. Peter: “Oh yes, I heard about you… RAF chap, dropped incindiary bombs on innocent civilians… Sorry, the down elevator is around the corner.”
I really don’t have a good definitive explanation on the angel (and would be loathe to give it if I did). I would say that with the appearance of the angel, the book gets an “extra-normal” character and jumps immediately into the realm of “epic.” Edward Mendelsohn has a great essay “Gravity’s Encyclopedia” in which he argues for the category of encyclopedic fiction. If I remember correctly, this is one of his criteria.
Dr. Vitz
i’m straggling, so the Lubeck background came at just the right time. i read it just after seeing these comments, and they helped round out the picture.
just wondering if anyone got the feeling that sir stephen dodson-truck–in this same section–was pynchon himself, like hitchcock, dropping into the story for a moment? slothrop observes sir stephen giving “maybe a try at being friendly in the only way he has available, sharing what engages and runs him, a love for the Word.” (the word in this case seems to be “words,” nothing formally religious.) anyway, he wasn’t around for long but he’s so complete and sympathetic in these passages that i hope he comes back.
that aside, this section contains some of the most beautiful langauge yet–“Oh, the hand of a terrible croupier is that touch on the sleeve of his dreams….”
it’s warmer in the tropics than in england.
Here’s another oddity. Mr. Cherrycoke who told on Basher about the angel may be a descendant of Reverend Cherrycoke from Mason & Dixon. Not that I got much farther in that book than the first few pages. But just something I noticed. Has anyone here read M&D?
My flight from florida was delayed. while everyone at the gate seemed exasparated, i was able to sit back and cruise… officially caught up, now i don’t feel like i’m ass over antenna or some such. i’m starting just beginning lose this taste that was put in my mouth about 40 pages ago.
If you can only know one “spell,” then Slothrop’s (p.203) is probably the best to learn. (Tap-dancing here to avoid The Censor.) Ancient magics are the most effective.
Vulgarity is almost always called “dirty”, and this is only an insult for those to whom the earth is its own realm in which they refuse to live. For all of Pynchon’s fascination with air and heaven–death that falls from the sky–on rare occasions even he must pay homage to the force of the other elements. The crashing of the sea is trite, but the Truth at the core is what makes us return to the image over and over: that we are made of water and flow like it, but Water bullies water and Sea roars over our damp selves. The dirt and dust and, yes, s*** that pervades his London has a power over us because we are dust, but loose and weak and unable to move things as Earth does.
Raptor Mage,
W-O-W!!!
H. Klinton vs Obama. How you think who will win elections in Unated States of America?