A few years ago, my daughter took part in what started out as an entirely unremarkable dance recital. She and maybe eight other 6-year-olds were bopping around on stage along with some familiar holiday tune. “Let It Snow”? “Jingle Bells”?
Midway through, the CD starts to skip. And it’s awful. One of those 15 second stretches of time that feels like the taste of melting tar. It’s not right. It’s not getting better. Somebody take this melting tar out of our mouths!
Then the music stops altogether and in the silence something lovely happens. The dancers just keep dancing. In silence. They finish the song with exceptional grace. And it was probably the best dancing I’ve ever seen.
This week reminded me a little of that. Not that we’re all a bunch of dancing 6-year-olds. Just that there was the lurch of the site. And then the silence. The silence. And then out of that silence, a graceful swirl of comments that began to spin out across the Week 4 stage almost as soon as the generators kicked back in. Lovely.
Which is all my longwinded way of saying, thanks to you all for bearing with this past week’s headaches. It’s fun to be back on the ‘march and great to see that, if need be, we can make do without a trail for a few days.
Of course, some of us faired better than others. Without the spur of daily posts, I my ownself fell about 20 pages shy of the target. But I’ve got some quality airport time coming up, and I’m leaving the old cylomite at home. So I’m hopeful I’ll be caught back up by next week. Speaking of which…
Tuesday 3/6: We have nothing to fear but page 280 itself, where the word on the street is, “we’d better get in some drinking…”
(in other words: please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 280. Try to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o’ day next Monday)
Oh, and don’t forget to check out Steve Evans rockin’ readin’ notes for last week right here.
Pugnax!
-Cecil
"…something like the supervisor of an entire team of political agents…"
I am officially behind for the first time on this March. But do you think that will keep me from being the first to leave a comment? You misunderestimate me.
I find the Sloat, Deuce & Lake section particularly fascinating. That wonderful combo of pathos and pornography. I found myself rooting against Deuce and Lake getting together and wondering how I could be emotionally committed to her. But he seems to be the one with the honest regrets – what kind of a hard-assed bad man is he anyway?
Meanwhile, there’s the Chums in Italy working on a growing conspiracy of some sort or another – as always, just beyond the threshhold of understanding – something like the Tarot itself. I already want to go back to the first part, because I’m sure there was more in those early CofC sections that would make all of this resonate more if only I had known what I was suppose to pay attention to at that time.
For what it is worth, my edition is starting to show serious wear from it many trips between work and home. Bent and frayed at every corner.
Bilocation. . .once more
In an earlier post I commented on the concept of bilocation, which, Hastings Throyle said, “enables those with the gift literally to be in two or more places, often widely separated, at the same time” (p. 143), and cited several examples we’ve encountered so far. Here’s another gloss on bilocation:
During the Transnoctial Discussion Group meeting–which begins on p.130–Dr. Blope remarks that “Times moves on but one axis. . .past to future–the only turning possible being turns of a hundred and eighty degrees. In the Quaternions, a ninety-degree direction would correspond to an additional axis whose unit is [the square root of -1].” (p. 132) In reading Michael Frayn’s The Human Touch I came across something which may help clarify Blope’s point.
In quantum mechanics, at the sub-atomic level, the nature of the physical world–the world of space/time–is dependent on the act of observation. An unobserved particle can follow more than one different trajectory simultaneously, but its behavior can be accommodated only by interpreting it not as a particle–a thing–but as a wave function, a mathematical abstraction representing the relative likelihood of its being in any particular place at any particular time. Its ambiguity is given expression in purely mathematical form, “rather as some numbers (such as the square root on a negative number) can be understood to have two definite but different values simultaneously.” (Frayn, p. 41) As soon as an observation is made of the particle to resolve its ambiguity, the ambiguities allowed by its mathematical expression vanish–and it becomes an object in “the given world,” as Blope responds Throyle. (p. 131)
Apparently my week 3 comment was lost, but I am in fact a-marching even though starting late. I’m closing in on 100, but hope to keep catching up.
My value added comment for the day: Smile (Brian Wilson) made a good soundtrack for the parts about Colorado mining towns, with it’s sweet old timiness etc.
March on!
this may be random of me to say, but I thought the bit about your daughter’s dance recital could be a really powerful full-length piece–I wanted more! ;o)
I love the reading notes. Really helped me remember stuff. All these characters can make a girl crazy.
i am behind in the reading but leaving town with this book as the better part of my luggage (in terms of content and weight).
maybe i’ll finally catch up while in the air–that would be fitting.
so this one’s for the magnet. see you all later.
We’ve all become accustomed to Pynchon’s descriptive powers. But I had a fresh appreciation for them this week when reading the several ways he describes facial expressions. Looking at a person “as though judging the distance across a chasm”* is an amazing and expressive metaphor. With such phrases he wraps up the actual face we should see _and_ the mental focus and purpose behind it.
* I might be paraphrasing here, I don’t have the book in front of me. I also might be spoiling; there were three such metaphors, and because I’m up around p.390 I don’t know whether I’m citing one from beyond the Pale.
Heyheyhey all friends and covorting types and travelers and vagabonds and jerks and nice ones…i’m also traveling (shout out to “e”) and have confonted the issues of weight and content of luggaging with this monsterhardback…and im also behind in the reading (shout out to “so-called bill” and “zoro with a z”…), and im restructuring my life as i type…ask me about it
.until next week
the chums in italy, ever closer to surpassing the blinding secular
perhaps with a twig of that icelandic spar
darby would not be bitching
tipico
the Sfincino Itinerary and that nebulous beast – join the russians in that battle against lost ways? if two airships are on the same flight path, either they are both mislead or they are both getting closer to the truth.
is lew world hopping
anemic prince, forget everything you have ever read about ‘reality’ on wikipedia, we have all been deliciously duped!
i LOVED this section! my first big blind comment is how ‘detective’ (the word, the occupation) keeps popping up throughout this book, and how doing a little sleuthing yourself while you’re reading the book can keep you up all night. i can’t sit here by my computer looking up every reference, i don’t have the time. but i’m still a little too enthralled with postmodernism not to get a little giddy with the idea of endless & complex references (even if, for no good reason but trivial pursuit). it seems one could certainly learn a bit by doing so. on the other hand, i refuse to go to the, what’s it called, against the day wiki(?) that explains it all – sort of the same as refusing to read the comments before posting mine… is that connected or paradoxical or both. i guess pynchon is fun for the gemini in anyone. anyway, for sleuthing example, i was compelled to google campanile and venice, and the first site i came to started out with “The Campanile di San Marco, or Belltower of St. Mark’s, has stood for more than a thousand years–or for less than a century, depending on how you define ‘truth in advertising.’ The present-day structure was built in 1912 as an exact replica of its predecessor, which collapsed unexpectly on the morning of July 14, 1902.â€? and it goes on to tell the story of its collapse and the rebuilding of the structure, etc. maybe it really was a ‘sky-fish’ that did the campanile in. maybe there was something else ‘out there’ – i don’t want to dig too much deeper into the actual history, tho, cuz what’s making it for me is this terrific romp, how everything is actually starting to come together, characters actually getting fleshed out a bit, the odd philosophical and scientific notions that give me pause, i don’t feel so isolated when i’m in colorado anymore–in fact, i got a terrific kick out of the deuce, lake, sloat storyline (sex at four corners!). yay.
A lot of the force of this book for me, esp. in this patch where the Big Ideas take a catnap and brio runs the asylum, comes from the lightning shifts between genres. Pynchon slips effortlessly from natty London parlors to Way Out West “smile when you say that” saloons to brainy Radcliffe girlspeak with a verisilimitude that somehow holds even when you realize you’re basically reading a cartoon. (Ellmore Disco’s hats, anyone?)
It’s partly that phenomenal ear for dialogue (TP can make anyone say just about anything and I believe they’re really saying it, in fact it’s what they’re saying–their speech–that he really seems to assemble his characters around), partly the gift for lists, a favorite Pynchon trick: set the scene with a sentence slathered in particulars and Voila! a world stirs to life. The description of the goods on offer in Ellmore Disco’s store (top p. 284) is one virtuoso example. Another good one, picked pretty much at random, here:
“They exited out the back, into Pacific Street, threading their way among ox and mule teams, piano-box buggies and three-spring phaetons, buckboards and big transfer wagons carrying loads between the train depot and the mines and shops, riders in dusters stiff and spectral with lowland alkali, Chinese pulling handcarts piled high with laundry …” (p. 286)
That’s Telluride, folks, pulled up fast as a scenery change in Cats.
Of course it helps that TP’s usually got a well-worn genre behind him, so you already have a picture in your mind from Westerns or comic books or Masterpiece Theater or horror novels or stereotypes of Japanese tourists or whatever of what he’s trying to evoke & tweak.
I wonder if it’s in this ability to breathe life into genres, or to make what’s patently generic sound naturalistic or “true to life” (the “Mel Blanc meets Zola” effect) that Pynchon expresses on the level of form what seems to be his pet content: that we all feel we’re individuals, with our own lives and passions and dreams, but pull back the curtain and there’s a genre writing us all, pulling us into its own jumbo narrative–but also connecting us in unexpected ways–for its own opaque aims. We’re not ourselves, we’re System. Or its dupes. Or sometimes, with enough drugs, its hapless resistors. I mean that electrically, sort of, nodes in a sometimes-half-visible grid. I’m reminded sometimes reading Pynchon of that Daffy Duck cartoon where he’s yelling at the artist while he’s being erased. Poor Daffy didn’t know he was drawn; he thought he was real. Daffy duped.
Not sure about that though; I’ll see how it holds up in the next installments.
P.S. One genre Pynchon doesn’t seem to blush about reviving is American ethnic humor. Jews, Japanese, Finns, Russians etc. What’s up with all the slaphappy stereotyping?
Like Del, I couldn’t resist a little outside research on the Campanile “event”: what could be more tempting than the lack of causality around that collapse? To a novelist like Pynchon I mean. Think of all the ways one could solve for it. And then admit you wouldn’t have thought of this one!
Glad Mike’s got “bilocation” covered. That note helped a lot!
And RaptorMage, far up ahead, thanks for the post about descriptive powers: there’re so many instances of it (faces, noises, motives) that one almost forgets how astonishing those many minute observations are, each by each, and in sum.
Wren Provenance: “You’ve simply ruined me for everyday bourgeois sexuality. Whatever am I to do?”
I’ve posted another batch of madeleines. Feeling, five legs in, that I’ve gotten the hang of TP’s “segmenting” of the narrative. Relative coherence at the chapter level (unities of character, setting, and action), with some phase- and pov-shifting permitted by the sub-sections. Nothing _too_ bewildering, though (on balance, I feel more situated in AtD than I did in GR).
Onward!
S.
I was doing so well, but now I’m way behind by about 1 week I’d say, have to take that book out in the sunshine.
Debra
Things are crazy around here right now, and I’m way behind. I’ll meet up with the group next week.
We’d better get in some drinking, indeed!
This section left my head spinning. The European illuminati conspiracy and it’s American counterpart: the family vengence story…all a little mystical for my tastes.
I am uplifted, though, by Lindsay Noseworthy’s witty insult: “Or we might send in pursuit your maternal relation, Suckling, one glipse of whom should prove more than sufficient fatally to compromise their morale, if not indeed transform them all into masonry-”
no….. i’m fallen and i can’t get up. i’m stuck in a part of the book that i just can’t get past… going to read the posts above… and hope it gets better… or at least for entertaining…
Very hectic week this week with little time for reading. And barely made this post. And here I go again. And again.
i’m so far behind i can’t even see the dust on the trail anymore… oh well, i’ll still march on cuz if it’s one thing i have, it’s endurance. maybe.
on track. it’s actually reading like a novel, go figure.
Help me! I can’t stop hanging on, even as I slip precariously down this slippery slope of missed reading deadlines.
I’m so far behind it’s unbelievable. And there’s no commitment to catching up in the foreseeable future. So, should I drop out?
Erin
I need some cyclomite/ cyclomite substitutes. I find Wild West saloon days unbearably tedius, and was interested to find that even the sex – in whatever direction or convolution – didn’t pique my interest, but the earlier description of drugs had me gasping.
Choose your perversion, as you would choose your Pynchon?
Calliscrappy
So I’m still early in this week’s (last week’s) reading, but I have to ask, how come nobody mentioned the obvious Star Trek reference? Don’t pretend you’re not nerds. I know better.
Confound you SCB! I was gonna call out the trek reference when I posted later tonight and here you’ve scooped me!
I’d missed the tetris reference till it was pointed out in the thread, so I thought that was my shot at redemption. Ah well. Mebbe there’s an In Search of reference somewhere I can suss out.
-Cecil
I’m about a week behind myself. I just finished up the cyclomite chewing Lew Basnight escaping the Galveston hurricane. For some reason I keep spoonerising his name to Blew Lasnight, with it’s obvious sexual references. I mean that’s the Pynchon I know & love! Now with references to dynamite & Tarot, Blew (up) has a new meaning for me. Or perhaps he is the Last Knight?
A couple of weeks ago I meant to comment on the Lizardmen episode. I first heard about the idea of the lizardmen from reading Neal Adams’ comics. (Famous 1970s artist.) He was obsessed with the idea of the lizardmen who lived in the hollow earth. Then I found out he was LITERALLY obsessed with it, to the point where he really is nuts. It’s an open secret in the comics community.
Later I read about them in Jorge Amado’s story about a man who blinds his friend in order to watch him transform into a lizardman. Now I’m finding out the UFOlogists consider the lizardmen one of the evil races in contact with us, and that many world leaders contain lizardman blood. Plus there’s the idea that we all still contain the anatomical remnants of the lizard cortex in the oldest parts of our brain.
So in some way I felt that this aspect of the story was just another accessing that pulp myth. I’ve read all this before. Pynchon used to be groundbreaking freak-out material in the 1960s, weirding out the “squares.” Nowadays there are so many people mining this material, so many friends and relatives who believe in it exclusively, that it’s hard to stay ahead of the curve. We’re all of us trying to weird out the squares, taking horrible risks phsyically and mentally. When we actually do meet squares (I’m thinking of the rightwing conservatives here) they tend to be so psychotically damaged by their apocolyptic bible stories that I have to wonder which of us is sane. I mean, I wouldn’t pray for total global annihilation.
So anyway, I’m loving it and identifying with some of these nutcases, but I’m still not so into it. I’m kind of waiting for it to really happen for me. (Ok, so I liked the part where Ditanny bent over for the whip, but that’s just cause I miss that pervy Pynchon.)
I did do some research on New York mayors of the time, and while there’s some amazing stories, none of them seemed to just “disappear” during a chaotic night. But then we seem to be easily wandering though alternate dimensions here. I wish it was as easy as stepping into a dynamite explosion to open a dimensional portal, but so far the search for alternate dimensions seems to require energy levels well above atomic blasts, and the theories about sub-milimeter dimensions curled up on themselves have not borne any fruit.
A plea to those being left behind, please slog through. You can do it! Forward into the dimensional breach, my friends!
I like Erin and slipping down the ever so slippery
deadline slope so for this week my comment is I’m darn
glad http://www.cecilvortex.cm is back and in action!