The first time through the book, not realizing what was coming up with Slothrop or how his life was being manipulated by Pointsman, I was living vicariously through Slothrop's paranoia. What was going on? Was he being set up? Or was it just Slothrop's nature to feel persecuted and manipulated? Although I did realize the octopus had definitely been trained to attack Katje so I knew a little more than Slothrop suspected. I just also didn't know enough. I was as lost as he was.
Bah! Who am I kidding?! I still don't know enough! Except maybe that, by nature, Pointsman is just a cruel man desperate to raise Pavlov's theories to some kind of ultimate answer to the meaning of life and why humans do the things they do. Wouldn't it be nice if you could discover that every reason behind every single thing a person does is because they've been conditioned to react in that way? What a breakthrough! And if you could prove that even a diseased personality like Slothrop reacts like one of Pointsman's dogs to different stimuli, you could change the world!
The chapter begins on Dr. Porkyevitch's boat, having recovered Grigori the octopus whom he had let loose earlier in the day, orders from Pointsman. Now he's done his part, he wonders: how will he still be useful to Pointsman? The war is nearing its end and funding is drying up all over The White Visitation. Except when it comes to Pointsman.
While wondering if Pointsman has any more use for Porkyevitch, he has a moment of existential dread that has something to do with his having fled Stalin's Russia. He was able to escape because of his love of science, because of his belief in Pavlov's physiological experiments. It gave him something to believe in other than the sanctity of Mother Russia. But he fears something he doesn't name. Possibly being sent back, exiled from his current exile back to his old home? Or hunted down for his part, true or not, in the Bukharin conspiracy against Stalin? Did Porkyevitch flee from the Great Purge and is now worried that he might not yet be completely free? He seems to think Pointsman is the type of man who would betray him (because of course he would!). I'm not clear on all the particulars of this opening bit but it seems like Porkyevitch does his part in the Slothrop experiment, gets worried that Pointsman has no use for him now (and no loyalty), and so he flees, to forget Russia and all, to live yet another new life, the last one post-Russia, this one post-Britain.
After running into Katje at dinner (where she asks him to meet her in her room after midnight), Slothrop heads to the bar with Tantivy to discuss conspiracies, particularly the one that involves an octopus and himself. Specifically, he wants to know what's up with Tantivy's friend Teddy Bloat.
Tantivy moans. "God, Slothrop, I don't know. I'm your friend too but there's always, you know, an element of Slothropian paranoia to contend with. . . ."
Tantivy reveals that Bloat has been receiving messages in code. Proof enough for Slothrop that Bloat and Katje are involved in some conspiracy against him. Tantivy reports he's also feeling the paranoia, the manipulation. He feels that Bloat no longer acts like his friend. Tantivy's now just a connection Bloat made at Oxford, to be used or redeemed for the benefit of the more underhanded party. I'm not sure what I felt for Tantivy the first time through the book but I feel sympathy for him this time. I like him and I'm sorry his and Slothrop's friendship doesn't continue. Slothrop could have used an ally he didn't have to constantly feel was using him for hidden reasons.
At 11:59 Slothrop turns to Tantivy, nods at the two girls, tries to chuckle lewdly, and gives his friend a quick, affectionate punch in the shoulder. Once, back in prep school, just before sending him into a game, young Slothrop's football coach socked him the same way, giving him confidence for at least fifty seconds, till being trampled flat on his ass by a number of red-dogging Choate boys, each with the instincts and mass of a killer rhino.
There's so much to this book that I often forget about parts of it that I should have constantly ready to reference at the front of my mind. But as Slothrop predicted, it would take only a small matter of time to forget about the rockets, just enough, in fact, for him to return to London to be completely petrified by the thought of them again. So I'd forgotten this book is about rockets—it's right there in the title!—until this line:
For a minute he lies coming awake, no hangover, still belonging Slothropless to some teeming cycle of departure and return.
Do the rockets, like human sleepers, forget what they are as they arc to their destination? Do they only remember their terrible purpose only as they're about to make impact? Or do they only remember after it's too late to remember, like the noise of their approach? Maybe I shouldn't be thinking too much of rockets here (although Pynchon is obviously referencing them) and I should just concentrate on the beauty of being "Slothropless" upon waking. We've all been there, often after waking from a nap that took us from daylight to dark, woke too suddenly from some alarm or loud noise, and thought, panicky, "Who am I? What time is it? What is happening?" A brief flurry of nearly unendurable seconds in which we know almost nothing, babes expelled from some dream posing as reality, exiled into fear and the unknown. Some beliefs and spiritualities concern themselves with total loss of ego and they must love those moments. They must be pure ecstasy. Aside from those waking moments, the only time I felt a loss of ego was when I took too many hallucinogenic mushrooms and found myself in the parking lot of a strip club in San Jose wondering if that had always been my life and the other life where I was a college graduate with plans to travel Asia in a few months was just a fantasy I engaged in to fill my empty life with meaning.
Oh! That moment of Slothroplessness takes place after Slothrop meets with Katje. After they fuck and they perform some Three Stooges/Marx Brothers/W.C. Fields slapstick routine (after which they fuck again). Slothrop might not be so concerned with Bloat's conspiracy if he just fucked Bloat too.
In the morning, Slothrop hears somebody in the next room stealing his clothes and he gives naked chase, eventually winding up wrapped in a purple sheet and falling out of a tree in front of Bloat and some general. It seems his night with Katje was a set up to steal all of his clothes, his papers, his identity. Everything. Even, he notices as Bloat takes him to his room for a British uniform to wear, Tantivy. No sign of Tantivy who had been rooming with Bloat. Just gone, overnight, when he should be returning well hungover and well fucked. But They've got to him too. They've got everything that connected Slothrop to who he was the night before he went to Katje's room. Like one of Spectro's patients that Pointsman lusted after, he's completely virginal. Pointsman's ideal subject.
Slothrop leaves Bloat to search for Tantivy. He winds up in the gambling hall of the casino but realizes the room was meant for something different, for something darker. It's the lodge of some secret organization whose dark purpose Slothrop can't begin to fathom, only knows that it involves him. It's as if the entire hotel were created for whatever purpose They have for him. Slothrop was not sent to a vacation spot on the Riviera; he was sent to some Masonic stage where every prop could be set just right and where every person plays a secret role. Slothrop has not been staying at a bed and breakfast; he'd been sequestered in a theater. Or, worse, a lab.
Being in a British uniform causes Slothrop to imagine all of his family's history in reverse until the first Slothrop who sailed to America was sucked back across the Atlantic by the reverse wind so that Slothrop never had an American ancestor. I mention this because it's just one of those nice "What the fuck is happening now?!" moments that Pynchon interrupts the story with on a near constant basis.
Lost and alone, having had everything of his taken from him, Slothrop can think of only one place left to go: Katje's room. And so he returns, not knowing if he's walking into salvation or suicide.
Bah! Who am I kidding?! I still don't know enough! Except maybe that, by nature, Pointsman is just a cruel man desperate to raise Pavlov's theories to some kind of ultimate answer to the meaning of life and why humans do the things they do. Wouldn't it be nice if you could discover that every reason behind every single thing a person does is because they've been conditioned to react in that way? What a breakthrough! And if you could prove that even a diseased personality like Slothrop reacts like one of Pointsman's dogs to different stimuli, you could change the world!
The chapter begins on Dr. Porkyevitch's boat, having recovered Grigori the octopus whom he had let loose earlier in the day, orders from Pointsman. Now he's done his part, he wonders: how will he still be useful to Pointsman? The war is nearing its end and funding is drying up all over The White Visitation. Except when it comes to Pointsman.
While wondering if Pointsman has any more use for Porkyevitch, he has a moment of existential dread that has something to do with his having fled Stalin's Russia. He was able to escape because of his love of science, because of his belief in Pavlov's physiological experiments. It gave him something to believe in other than the sanctity of Mother Russia. But he fears something he doesn't name. Possibly being sent back, exiled from his current exile back to his old home? Or hunted down for his part, true or not, in the Bukharin conspiracy against Stalin? Did Porkyevitch flee from the Great Purge and is now worried that he might not yet be completely free? He seems to think Pointsman is the type of man who would betray him (because of course he would!). I'm not clear on all the particulars of this opening bit but it seems like Porkyevitch does his part in the Slothrop experiment, gets worried that Pointsman has no use for him now (and no loyalty), and so he flees, to forget Russia and all, to live yet another new life, the last one post-Russia, this one post-Britain.
After running into Katje at dinner (where she asks him to meet her in her room after midnight), Slothrop heads to the bar with Tantivy to discuss conspiracies, particularly the one that involves an octopus and himself. Specifically, he wants to know what's up with Tantivy's friend Teddy Bloat.
Tantivy moans. "God, Slothrop, I don't know. I'm your friend too but there's always, you know, an element of Slothropian paranoia to contend with. . . ."
Tantivy reveals that Bloat has been receiving messages in code. Proof enough for Slothrop that Bloat and Katje are involved in some conspiracy against him. Tantivy reports he's also feeling the paranoia, the manipulation. He feels that Bloat no longer acts like his friend. Tantivy's now just a connection Bloat made at Oxford, to be used or redeemed for the benefit of the more underhanded party. I'm not sure what I felt for Tantivy the first time through the book but I feel sympathy for him this time. I like him and I'm sorry his and Slothrop's friendship doesn't continue. Slothrop could have used an ally he didn't have to constantly feel was using him for hidden reasons.
At 11:59 Slothrop turns to Tantivy, nods at the two girls, tries to chuckle lewdly, and gives his friend a quick, affectionate punch in the shoulder. Once, back in prep school, just before sending him into a game, young Slothrop's football coach socked him the same way, giving him confidence for at least fifty seconds, till being trampled flat on his ass by a number of red-dogging Choate boys, each with the instincts and mass of a killer rhino.
There's so much to this book that I often forget about parts of it that I should have constantly ready to reference at the front of my mind. But as Slothrop predicted, it would take only a small matter of time to forget about the rockets, just enough, in fact, for him to return to London to be completely petrified by the thought of them again. So I'd forgotten this book is about rockets—it's right there in the title!—until this line:
For a minute he lies coming awake, no hangover, still belonging Slothropless to some teeming cycle of departure and return.
Do the rockets, like human sleepers, forget what they are as they arc to their destination? Do they only remember their terrible purpose only as they're about to make impact? Or do they only remember after it's too late to remember, like the noise of their approach? Maybe I shouldn't be thinking too much of rockets here (although Pynchon is obviously referencing them) and I should just concentrate on the beauty of being "Slothropless" upon waking. We've all been there, often after waking from a nap that took us from daylight to dark, woke too suddenly from some alarm or loud noise, and thought, panicky, "Who am I? What time is it? What is happening?" A brief flurry of nearly unendurable seconds in which we know almost nothing, babes expelled from some dream posing as reality, exiled into fear and the unknown. Some beliefs and spiritualities concern themselves with total loss of ego and they must love those moments. They must be pure ecstasy. Aside from those waking moments, the only time I felt a loss of ego was when I took too many hallucinogenic mushrooms and found myself in the parking lot of a strip club in San Jose wondering if that had always been my life and the other life where I was a college graduate with plans to travel Asia in a few months was just a fantasy I engaged in to fill my empty life with meaning.
Oh! That moment of Slothroplessness takes place after Slothrop meets with Katje. After they fuck and they perform some Three Stooges/Marx Brothers/W.C. Fields slapstick routine (after which they fuck again). Slothrop might not be so concerned with Bloat's conspiracy if he just fucked Bloat too.
In the morning, Slothrop hears somebody in the next room stealing his clothes and he gives naked chase, eventually winding up wrapped in a purple sheet and falling out of a tree in front of Bloat and some general. It seems his night with Katje was a set up to steal all of his clothes, his papers, his identity. Everything. Even, he notices as Bloat takes him to his room for a British uniform to wear, Tantivy. No sign of Tantivy who had been rooming with Bloat. Just gone, overnight, when he should be returning well hungover and well fucked. But They've got to him too. They've got everything that connected Slothrop to who he was the night before he went to Katje's room. Like one of Spectro's patients that Pointsman lusted after, he's completely virginal. Pointsman's ideal subject.
Slothrop leaves Bloat to search for Tantivy. He winds up in the gambling hall of the casino but realizes the room was meant for something different, for something darker. It's the lodge of some secret organization whose dark purpose Slothrop can't begin to fathom, only knows that it involves him. It's as if the entire hotel were created for whatever purpose They have for him. Slothrop was not sent to a vacation spot on the Riviera; he was sent to some Masonic stage where every prop could be set just right and where every person plays a secret role. Slothrop has not been staying at a bed and breakfast; he'd been sequestered in a theater. Or, worse, a lab.
Being in a British uniform causes Slothrop to imagine all of his family's history in reverse until the first Slothrop who sailed to America was sucked back across the Atlantic by the reverse wind so that Slothrop never had an American ancestor. I mention this because it's just one of those nice "What the fuck is happening now?!" moments that Pynchon interrupts the story with on a near constant basis.
Lost and alone, having had everything of his taken from him, Slothrop can think of only one place left to go: Katje's room. And so he returns, not knowing if he's walking into salvation or suicide.
No comments:
Post a Comment