Still behind, but to quote Parliament’s immortal “Chocolate City,” I’m gainin’ on ya. Just one chapter shy of the mark now….
From the comments, it looks like a number of us have renewed energy for this adventure. Whether it’s the sweetness between Frank and Mayva, Zoltan flying off his barstool, the increasingly crude Suckling (who I keep waiting to learn is part werewolf), a side trip inside the Hotel Noctambulo, Roswell’s enthusiasm, the Thorvaldic Telegraph, my absolutely favoritist name yet in “Stilton Gaspereaux,” or the entire spectacular adventure under (or inside rather?) the sand, this felt all around like one of those “that’s why we read TP” sorta weeks.
As a few have pointed out, there’s also the sense that threads are coming together — that a few patterns that were once (dare I say) invisible, are now becoming visible. Thanks to all that lovely light, I guess.
Once again, the mighty Steve “Heurtebise” Evans has come through with a batch of madeleines — be sure to drop by for a well-earned snack.
Tuesday 4/10: Let’s make camp at the bottom of page 547, where we’ll do our best to avoid “death by mayonnaise.”
(which is to say…. please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 547. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o’ day next Monday)
Pugnax!
-Cecil
"…something like the supervisor of an entire team of political agents…"
The Stupendica becomes the Emperor Maximilian. Fascinating stuff. Suddenly the quantum world opens and one ship literally becomes two. If Kit is on the dreadnought and Dally is on the cruise ship, are the people changed as well as the ship? Inquiring minds want to know!
I hit this quotation on p. 540 – “The mere street profile of a frock coat worn longer and looser than any Gentile would present made him reach for his revolver.” And found myself thinking about “When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver” remarked Joseph Goebbels
Much as I generally disagree with Goebbels, I can see his point. It’s a great album – especially “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
What? Nobody posting until the last minute? Are all the marchers getting their twigs and bullrushes ready for Dyngus Day tomorrow? Seriously, folks, this last batch has been a bit challenging for this reader. The whole mayonnaise museum, mayonnaise factory with disembodied egg-laying chicken wraiths, etc. etc., felt more weird than ever for me. However, a couple of things struck my fancy: “Seeing that, on the face of it, all mathematics leads, doesn’t it, sooner or later, to some kind of human suffering.” (p. 541). Oh yeah. And, Kit, “having against his better judgment accompanied Pleiade to her suite…” and once she vanished, questioned “Should he start conversing with a negligee?” Peeking ahead, I’m glad we’ll be back with “the crew of the Inconvenience” soon.
P.S. I’m a Polish person originally from the Chicago area, where Dyngus Day celebrations are a bit more scattered and not as orthodox. Now, Buffalo, Cleveland, and yes Toronto, Canada…they’ve got the whole Dyngus Day thing down pat. If only they knew how to use the Quaternians…..sigh
Yes, Im not used to being one of the first to post. A nice helping of duality this week. The Stupendica as cruise ship and battle ship. 2 cities of Agadir from the Jonah story. And the discussion of Kit being so familiar with the Belgian nihilists as if he had been one of them until something terrible happened which he couldnt quite remember, harkening back to the story of Lew Basnight who couldnt quite remember what horrible thing he had done in his past life.
Rodney K’s point that Pynchon seems to have his cake and eat it too, reminded me of how the humor is all over the place too. Some subtle stuff, some irony, and every once in awhile he’ll throw in a line like “Ah pardon, mon chu, thats not what you think?” (is that a cod in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?). Or La Mayonnaisse and La Marseillaise. A little comedic something for everyone.
A lot of interesting references to the low lands about to be overwhelmed by the oncoming deluge, which made me think of Katrina, though Im not sure thats what P was going for.
I enjoyed the reference to the Johah story, probably because its one of the few biblical stories I remember. (Is it just me, or does it seem that those who tend to wear their frock coats shorter and tighter seem to know the Old Testament better than those like me who wear them longer and looser?)
dr. vitz–
The culture quote I’d often heard as either Goering or Goebbels, but I’ve been killing time waiting for the death march to catch up (~p800 before I stumbled onto the thread), so I’ve been reading the new Niall Ferguson history “The World at War,” wherein he enlightened me on the topic of Nazi Laureate Hanns Johst (whose play “Schlageter” contains the original line).
Anyway, see you all in a few weeks.
magnet place holder. on the run. see you on the new thread when time may at last slow to a lope.
still a few pages to go. this section seems more piffle than usual, but mebbe it’s just my state of mind today. i like the luxury ship=the warship, what truth. will attempt to write more when i finish the next 15 pages or so.
It almost feels as though the deathmarch has bi-located: has there been a noticeable spike at some other novel’s fan site? With unexplained blasts of harmonica and volcanic eruptions protruding from the soniferous background? (I hadn’t known, until consulting wikipedia, that the eruption at Krakatoa produced the loudest sound ever heard: clearly audible nearly 2,000 miles away!)
I’m fairly sure the “Young Congo” crew are the Chums in another guise, as are the blondes in the budding grove of Newnham and Girton (Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun–all dying of love for Yashmeen, as are Rodney K. and the N-squared Wildeans!). And everyone corresponds not only to a Tarot card, but a poet (again like Rodney K!).
Me, I’m on the record as smitten with Dally, though this week I better understand that I’m just, and sentimentally, identifying with her adopted daughter behavior toward the admirable Erlys. I leave her then to Kit, who has some family issues of his own to overcome before entering into an, uhm, relationship. Whatever that could mean in this book.
The Mayonnaise / Marseilles joke got me, by the way. The rest of the scene, not so much.
“‘Are you authorized to speak for the gods of Chance?’ inquired Eugénie?”
Not I,
Heurtebise dit Steve
That is that of which I speak!
Yashmeen, Cyprian, mathematics in general, and the whole segment around p. 500 have about done me in. I don’t even care what the words mean. To turn the page and find out I get to spend some time with Dally and Erlys again (and Merle is my man) is blessed relief. I will finally catch up–maybe even before Cecil next posts.
50 pages behind. i plan on making a big push…
I had meant to mention the 2 Agadirs. Reminded me of Moby Dick. The reverend in MD has a sermon about Jonah and that when he chooses to head for Agadir rather than Nineveh (as ordered by God), he is basically going to the other side of the known world (assuming the Mediterranean is truly the center of the world as its name suggests). The fact that Pynchon referenced Jonah then sent Kit to a further Agadir suggests that he is outside the known world somehow. I find that idea both confounding and helpful.
On the culture quotation – I’d always heard Goebbels, but I have no source with legitimate provenance, so I fully accept that it could have been Goering. The association may end at the distrust of Jews.
BTW – does anyone understand the quaternion math? I asked one of the math teachers I work with, but he’d never heard of the philosophy. Read the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion) but I still can’t wrap my mind around the whole i2=j2=k2=ijk=-1. It just goes against everything I understand about math.
Still behind, but passing page 500 felt like a major achievement. I agree that the Yashmeen stuff is fairly tedious, but I anticipate good times ahead.
Who’s hosting the halfway party?
True, So-Called Bill. Yashmeen as the object of unrequited (and occasionally requited) lust is not so interesting. But her creeping obsession with Riemann and the “tantalizing possibility” of that Zeta-function…that’s another story.
And, as Cyprian muses on p.504:
“…no such attack of sadness occurred, and presently he understood that some perverse variety of Fate, already familiar to him, which did not prommise but rather witheld, was offering him the assurance that none of ‘this’ – whatever it was supposed to be – was quite done with yet.”
In writing about anarchists, you have to be a little anarchic, or a lot anarchic, a tough thing I think for Pynchon the Engineer, the word-wizard, the He Who Knows. Mayonnaise helps; so do drugs; so do the Brothers Marx.
I’m still under pg 500, despite some heavy slogs. I guess I get to a new chapter, see who’s in it, and then skirt away if it’s someone I don’t like, leap in if I do. (Frank is cool, ditto Dally, Reef is ehh, Deuce is major ecchh. CoC are moving down my scale, Yashmeen up.)
One of the things that struck me this week, (or so) was the colonization from the future. Last year there was a DC comic series called 7 Soldiers, which revolved around our Earth being attacked from the far futre. It always surprises me how zeitgeist works.
Somewhere along the line, perhaps with all the holy grail talk, was the idea that we are seeing Arthurian legends, and that some of the characters map onto that group. I somehow see Merle as Merlin, of course, Lew as Lancelot (dunno why), Yashmeen as Guenivere, etc. It’s still kind of sketchy, but it feels that way. Not sure who Arthur is. Perhaps Kit?
Anyway, hoping for some slower weeks to try to catch up.
Just staggered drunkenly onto Cecil’s efforts here but have been ploughing through simultaneously at just about the same speed. Will concur that this section is where things start to pick up again, all the characters revealing insight into, for better and for worse (Deuce) Genuine Personality. But I suspect the joke’s on us — we’re getting a break, condign respite in the form of an entertaining and breezy hundred pages before a snowball fight with an eight-armed god.
And there’s a serious PhD Thesis Moneyshot in drawing analogy to Melville.
— Mtte.
yeah, math equals colorado to me, i’m afraid. i finally made it thru this section and was heartened (?) to read of the general malaise of others. i totally assume it will pick up again before getting all scattershot (again). i need some canned air, file tabs, and colored file folders. oh, i love it—if i’m not mistaken did dr. rao appear somewhere in our last sweep of pages yet over 500 pages since his previous appearance and introduction (on page 7)? of course, i could very well be mistaken — he may’ve been there all along…