<div dir="ltr">Like cheap perfume?</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 7:58 PM, Monte Davis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:montedavis49@gmail.com" target="_blank">montedavis49@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">(That should be "chep nihilism" in the penultimate paragraph)</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Monte Davis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:montedavis49@gmail.com" target="_blank">montedavis49@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">end of P. 57 -> P. 58</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default">Foxes and dogs again, among the latter a painted pointer "alerted by the eternal scent, the explosion over his head always just about to come." Good boy, Tyrone!</div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><a href="http://www.old-print.com/mas_assets/full3/J5141807/J5141807448.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.old-print.com/mas_assets/full3/J5141807/J5141807448.jpg</a><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/43/02/f0/4302f06cbc44b3b2e6fbc371f51b2bce.jpg" target="_blank">https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/43/02/f0/4302f06cbc44b3b2e6fbc371f51b2bce.jpg</a><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default">What makes these images -- standard English fare at the time  for exurban bourgeois as well as country-house aristocracy -- "<font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">even more autumnal, necropolitical, than prewar hopes"..? This section has reminded us before and will remind us again that Roger & Jessica's evasion  of the war is temporary and precarious -- but here we're told that golden autumnal meadows are *becoming* a City of the Dead (necropolis). Just a _memento mori_ for the lovers, for a nostalgic English self-image? More?</font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">58.11-15: something blocks Roger's speech, and "how does she know... so exactly what Roger meant to say?" (Reinforcing 56.37's "Roger really wants other people to know what he’s talking about. Jessica understands that.") A hug, melting into arousal for both, is more than a consolation prize for "failure to communicate" -- it *is* communication, "mind-to-mind."</font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">58.16 brings us back to the framing night of winter solstice. Perhaps the clinch just above was earlier the same night -- the section began with "</font>pillows in front of the fire. Roger’s clothing... scattered all about." Or perhaps all their nights here are one, off the timeline and off the books.</div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">58.24: "</span><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Pointsman’s... his... a bleakness whenever she meets him. Scientist-neutrality." How does that differ from Roger's commitment to the data and only the data about rocketfalls, which was only recently "cheap cynicism"...? Or is Roger's version of neutrality less creepy to her *because* it makes him uncomfortable even as he insists on it? NB he repeatedly, parodically *plays* the mad scientist in exchanges with her. If I didn't know that Pynchon fears and condemns science like all good creative souls, I'd think there's some quite interesting ambivalence being modeled here.  </font><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">58.33: "</font><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">And the people who might have been asleep in the empty houses here . .., are they dreaming of cities that shine all over with lamps at night, of Christmases seen again from the vantage of children and not of sheep huddled so vulnerable on their bare hillside, so bleached by the Star’s awful radiance?"</font></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Spoilers be damned, this is a sweet foretaste of the Advent evensong coming up three nights from now (p. 127) </span><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div></div>
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