Sailors and Barmaids and Beer
[T]here was Ploy, sitting crosslegged on his rack, sharpening his teeth with a small bastard file […]
Around eleven, Beatrice swayed by, carrying a tray full of beers. Gleeful, Ploy stuck his head out, opened his jaws wide, and sank his newly-filed dentures into the barmaid's right buttock […] the first wave came hurtling over the bar. Ploy, hands outstretched, was propelled over the top. He caught on to one of the tap handles and simultaneously his shipmates let go; his momentum carried him and the handle in a downward arc: beer began to gush from the foam rubber breast in a white cascade, washing over Ploy, Mrs. Buffo and two dozen sailors who had come around behind the bar in a flanking action and who were now battering one another into insensibility […]
Profane sat at the end of the bar, watching […] Paola was there, arms around his leg, cheek pressed against the black denim.
"It's awful," she said.
"Oh," said Profane. He patted her head. (p. 12, 16)
In the opening scene of the novel, Pynchon immediately establishes a unique tone through his cartoonish, bawdy imagery: Ploy with spiked teeth, biting a barmaid’s buttocks; sailors in a frenzy, hoping for a spot at the rubber breast beer taps—these are greatly exaggerated images. Moreover, the stage picture succinctly introduces the reader to Benny Profane: sitting separately from the rest, an unmoved onlooker, Profane is characterized as a passive character. Even when Paola encourages him to form an opinion, saying “It’s awful,” Profane remains detached, managing only an empty “Oh.”
Sick of News
It was one in the morning, a wind had risen and something curious too had happened; as if everyone in the city, simultaneously, had become sick of news of any kind; for thousands of newspaper pages blew through the small park on the way crosstown, blundered like pale bats against the trees, tangled themselves around the feet of Roony and Rachel, and of a bum sleeping across the way. Millions of unread and useless words had come to a kind of life in Sheridan Square; while the two on the bench wove cross-tally of their own, oblivious, among them. (p. 296)
This sequence takes the clichéd image of the abandoned American West—tumbleweeds rolling, gathering along a plank-and-batten ghost town—and transposes it to a contemporary Manhattan, with newspapers flying like “pale bats,” gathering on pedestrians and the homeless. Thematically, the scene crafts a cynical view of information and the media: the news, even if “unread and useless,” can take on a “kind of life” of its own, swarming the streets. Were New York a ghost town, would the news be all that was left to remember us by?
Foppl's Planetarium
[F]inally down three or four steps to Foppl's own planetarium, a circular room with a great wooden sun, overlaid with gold leaf, burning cold in the very center and round it the nine planets and their moons, suspended from tracks in the ceiling, actuated by a coarse cobweb of chains, pulleys, belts, racks, pinions and worms, all receiving their prime impulse from a treadmill in the corner, usually operated for the amusement of the guests by a Bondelswaartz, now unoccupied. Having long fled all vestiges of music Mondaugen released her [Hedwig] here, skipped to the treadmill and began a jog-trot that set the solar system in motion, creaking and whining in a way that raised a prickling in the teeth. Rattling, shuddering, the wooden planets began to rotate and spin, Saturn's rings to whirl, moons their precessions, our own Earth its nutational wobble, all picking up speed; as the girl continued to dance, having chosen the planet Venus for her partner; as Mondaugen dashed along his own geodesic, following in the footsteps of a generation of slaves (p. 239).
Deep in the labyrinth that is Foppl’s villa, there is a planetarium—a model of the solar system. Amongst the passage’s complex sensory details, Pynchon places a harrowing metaphor: the mechanical solar system is driven by a treadmill, powered by “the footsteps of a generation of slaves.” To put it simply: slavery powers the world.
Pynchon takes the metaphor further. This is a dance scene, in which Hedwig waltzes with the planet Venus as her partner—symbolic, surely, of V. Their music is the model’s “creaking and whining,” “rattling” and “shuddering.” The final image, then, is one of cavalier juxtaposition, in which V. and Hedwig carouse amongst a model of decadence, oblivious or indifferent to the shadow of slavery sustaining their dance. The wooden sun is “burning cold”…
Dance of Death
"Get in there at rush hour," said Slab. "There are nine million yo-yos in this town."
Stencil took this advice one evening after five, came out with one rib to his umbrella broken and a vow never to do it again. Vertical corpses, eyes with no life, crowded loins, buttocks and hip-points together. Little sound except for the racketing of the subway, echoes in the tunnels. Violence (seeking exit): some of them carried out two stops before their time and unable to go upstream, get back in. All wordless. Was it the Dance of Death brought up to date?” (p. 303).
Here, Pynchon visually compares the heart of U.S. industriousness and enterprise—the New York subway system, at rush-hour, crammed with commuters—to the Middle Ages’ “Dance of Death,” an archetype in which the living are portrayed dancing alongside the dead: it is an allegory for human mortality, and the preeminence of death. Images of the “Dance of Death” typically include kings alongside religious leaders alongside the impoverished. Here, Pynchon makes a similar point: New York City, even in its relative wealth, is not any further from death—in fact, it may be closer.
