The Counterforce (Has Conquered Me)

Well, my first impulse is to find a way to say, “This is the Counterforce. Here it is.” But I think instead, I’ll just have to settle for identifying a few places it comes up and speculating from there, yet again. Anyway, I might as well begin with the scene in Pirate’s maisonette that I think you’ve quoted from at some point. Page 650, Pirate is carrying out that whole “sagely revelator” role for Roger, telling him:

“‘Of course a well-developed They-system is necessary – but it’s only half the story. For every They there ought to be a We. In our case, there is. Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a They-system –’”

Straightforward enough. Pirate goes on to tell Roger that “real and unreal” don’t matter, only whether or not the data can be arranged consistently within these systems, essentially sketching out criteria for being a “good” paranoiac, which calls to mind Tantivy’s conversation with Slothrop way back in London about “operational paranoia” – “That can be useful, especially in combat…” (25) to pretend They’re out get you. Without insinuating that Tantivy is anything more than eager and ignorant, if one imagines “combat” as descriptive of the singular “Us-Against-Them War” that’s implicit in these Postwar conditions, you can consider Mucker-Maffick a sort of sage as well, identifying a sort of Counterforce even here, i.e., that Our paranoia is a force working against Their designs.

Jump ahead to the scene at Utgarthaloki’s party, Roger and Bodine combating the image of Roger being rotisserie-d with an assault of disgusting alliterative hypothetical dishes. Once things start getting out of hand (guests are vomiting, etc.) certain marginalized characters get in on the fun, like investigative journalist Constance Flamp, and the Inner Voices of the string quartet. Eventually a black butler helps the pair escape, saying “Pimple pie with filth frosting, gentlemen,” like a salute to the Counterforce. Gustav the musician even says, “Perhaps you don’t want people like me…” as if Roger is going around recruiting for a team (731) and we later learn that Brigadier Pudding, in death is “now a member of the Counterforce” as well.

However in this scene and in its connection to the Counterforce, there is something more than just a few slighted paranoids who get their kicks upsetting a dinner party: there is once again, a preoccupation with human waste and the vile mortality of the human body. That increasingly numerous English gentry are sent to the bathroom by Roger and Pig’s scatological exclamations is a way of illustrating the force that works against this sort of “bleached” congregation of stuffy power-tripping old people – that regardless of the mechanical disembodied power they’ve managed to amass here, base animal Death will come for them as well. Granted this description of the Counterforce says nothing of its references to the parabola of a rocket’s flight or to perhaps the Historical Gravity that was inevitable in the arc of the Nazis, but I think that will pop up organically in one or two of the following points.

So now is as good a time as any to get to the sex (not that I have a comprehensive theory on it or anything, but so it goes). I want to single out the passage on pg 751 when Thanatz is attempting to seduce Ludwig the Lemming Boy, entreating, “Ludwig, a little S and M never hurt anybody.” What follows is his theory that sadomasochism has been made taboo solely because it is essential to Their techniques of maintaining power.

“It needs our submission so that it may remain in power. It needs our lusts after dominance so that it can co-opt us into its own power game…I tell you if S&M could be established universally…the State would wither away.”

This “theory” seems capable of simultaneously shedding light on the role/nature of Blicero, Margherita, etc. and also on the novel’s use of sex in general (i.e., “[submission and dominance] cannot be wasted in private sex.”) It seems fair enough to once again highlight the word waste in that statement, that by making personal and private use of dominance and submission, something “useful” to Them instead fulfills the same symbolic role of excrement in the novel: a reminder of mortality, one that can work against the expansion of the white “Deathkingdom.” I’m reminded of that supposed original title of the novel, Mindless Pleasures, in that by following this logic of private sex as something very un-useful for Them (and thus sacred to Us), it makes sense that descriptions of private sex (Roger and Jessica, Slothrop and everyone, even the imagined Pokler and Ilse, et al.) are among the most sensitively constructed passages in the novel. I’m struggling to think of a sex scene that was disturbed by a ridiculous Vaudevillian song, which is something no other stage seems safe from in GR.

When Katje meets up with Enzian, and they discuss Slothrop, Blicero, the Zone, etc. Katje [seems as if she] confesses that “[she doesn’t] really know why they sent [her] out here…There’s a failure in the light. I can’t see.” (672) It’s somehow more revelatory than as if she had said “The light is blinding me.” For me the phrase “failure in the light” describes a certain purpose or intention that was lost. Of course, on the semi-surface, Katje is identifying the nature of these paranoid holy centers, like how Tchitcherine, in the presence of the Khirgiz Light, only sees that he cannot see it fully. But there is also the light/dark dynamic that plays into the German aesthetic, the extended/expanded symbolism of the Nazi pursuit of the perfect Aryan race: bleached, pure white, and these are implications are at work in Katje’s confession too.

On a vaguely related subject, Enzian, before firing the 00001, feels he must pass his knowledge on to Josef Ombindi, which includes the idea that the Rocket is ultimate proof of Their lies, lies of safety and protectedness, because once the Rocket exists, each are as prone to it as any other; no protection can be guaranteed. It is, in a slightly different way than the shit-motif, a constant reminder of mortality. “We can’t believe Them anymore. Not if we are still sane, and love the truth.” (743)

As for the ending of the novel, I think enough has been said about how Slothrop’s dissolution is mirrored by the dissolution of narrative structure or vice versa. What I’m currently finding more compelling is that [a] Pynchon reinvokes the religious beliefs of William Slothrop (the grandfather of preterition, so to speak, hyeugh hyeugh hyeugh) and that [b] it ends with an all-inclusive directive.

[a]“DESCENT” is apparently set inside an old movie theater, wherein something has gone wrong: either the film has been cut or a bulb in the projector has blown. To me this is saying one of these things: either that these folks (reader included) are part of Preterite and are encouraged to invoke their sort-of patron saint in the last moments before being blasted to oblivion, that these folks are the Preterite who are being “passed over” by the Rocket (which I guess would kind of invert a lot of ideas about elect and preterite) or that these people are the Elect, chosen by the Rocket. What’s certain is that, regardless of which class these people belong to, gravity (whether this means physical gravity or the “gravity of history” is debatable – I assume both) has already begun to act on this rocket – hence the title of the subsection. I go back to that idea that William Slothrop may have been the “wrong move” America made at some long-past decision point. To call him up here would be a reminder of that possibility, maybe just a mean little hint that the full weight of that wrong move is about just about to crash down on this movie-going audience. The presence of the cinematic here, not so much as a framing device anymore as an identifying device, seems to say something…but to be honest, I really just don’t know what.

[b]“Now everybody” –” ---- is this the scariest ending of a novel ever? It just hangs there, as if it’s asking YOU to join in with this death-hymn, or perhaps even more frightening, that this call is made for a chorus, and by that point there’s no one there to answer. I think it has this uncanny ability to knock the reader out of the book without also sending the message that it’s “finished.” You’re done reading, not because there are no more words left, but because the book told you to do something. It’s just downright eerie.

Looking back, this post seems inconclusive, disorganized, a little immature compared to my last one (maybe even 2), but I’m telling you, it’s not my fault! I guess it’s the nature of the beast that I’d put double the amount of time and effort into this last section and come out with a big ball of loose ends. The least I can do is say that after thinking a little bit about what I’d like to write about come end-of-times, I mean term, some of my initial ideas seem to involve how P.’s protagonists are mythologized, the presence/function of the cinematic, and Osbie Feel (just kidding).

To Vineland!

Matt