Need help

[Jody Keith Gilbert]

> 
> I'm hoping someone out there can give some help--I'm doing a little paper 
> about the "high magic in low puns" idea in _Lot 49_, and can't remember 
> an article I read a while ago which examined TP's character names, and 
> what such ridiculous names do for the reader.  Also, there's a passage in 
> _GR_ I can't find either, something like "Do you know what the rate of 
> change is at a cusp point?  It's infinity, folks."  Basically I'm trying 
> to see how TP packs so many allusions and meanings into something so 
> basic as the names of characters.  Any and all help is appreciated.
> Kevin Crosby
> crosb003 at maroon.tc.umn.edu
> 
p. 664 Viking edition  p. 773 Bantam or there abouts

Well, it's a matter of continuity. Most people's lives have ups and
downs that
are relatively gradual, a sinuous curve with first derivatives at
every point.
They're the ones who never get struck by lightning. No real idea of
cataclysm at
all. But the ones who do get hit experience a singular point, a
discontinuity in
the curve of lifeQdo you know what the time rate of change is at a
cusp?
Infinity, that's what! A-and right across the point, it's minus
infinity! How's
that for sudden change, eh? Infinite miles per hour changing to the
same speed
in reverse, all in the gnat's-ass or red cunt hair of the ~t across
the point.
That's getting hit by lightning, folks. You're way up there on the
needle-peak
of a mountain, and don't think there aren't lammergeiers cruising
there in the
lurid red altitudes around, waiting for a chance to snatch you off. Oh
yes. They
are piloted by bareback dwarves with little plastic masks around their
eyes that
happen to be shaped just like the infinity symbol: oo. Little men with
wicked
eyebrows, pointed ears and bald heads, although some of them are
wearing
outlandish headgear, not at all the usual Robin Hood green fedoras, no
these are
Carmen Miranda hats, for example, bananas, papayas, bunches of grapes,
pears,
pineapples, mangoes, jeepers even watermelonsQand there are World War
I spiketop
Wilhelmets, and baby bonnets and crosswise Napoleon hats with and
without Ns on
them, not to mention little red suits and green capes, well here they
are
leaning forward into their cruel birds' ears, whispering like jockeys,
out to
nab you, buster, just like that sacrificial ape off of the Empire
State
Building, except that they won't let you fall, they'll carry you away,
to the
places they are agents of. It will look like the world you left, but
it'll be
different. Between congruent and identical there seems to be another
class of
look-alike that only finds the lightning-heads. Another world laid
down on the
previous one and to all appearances no different. Ha-ha! But the
lightning-struck know, all right! Even if they may not know they know.
And
that's what this undertaker tonight has set out into the storm to
find.


==============================================================================

John (Jody) K. Gilbert
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C. Canada
office phone (604) 291-3220
dept. phone  (604) 291-3136
internet     gilbert at sfu.ca