Pynchon test

[Andrew Dinn]

DKGIBBONS at delphi.com writes:

> Now what sea is this you have crossed, exactly, and what sea is it
> you have plunged more than once to the bottom of, alerted, full of
> adrenalin, but caught really, buffaloed under the epistemologies of
> these threats that paranoid you so down and out, caught in this
> steel pot, softening to devitaminized mush inside the soup=stock of
> your own words, your waste submarine breath?  It took the dreyfus
> Affair to get the Zionists out and doing, finally: what will drive
> you out of your soup-kettle?  Has it already happened?  Was it
> tonight's attack and deliverance?  Will you go to the Heath, and
> begin your settlement, and wait there for your Director to come?"

> If you can place and explain that paragraph you might convince me
> you are the man himself.

Place? I believe it comes at the end of the section dealing with the
Argentinian U-boat crew at the point where reality diverges and `der
Aal' hits an old hulk while the `USS John Badass' sails blithely on.

But I don't think that's what you mean. I would locate it with it's
companion piece in part IV, which precedes the Orpheus Theatre
scene. This tells of the narrator joining the struggle and tasting his
first blood in a subway in 1967 and contains a direct address to the
reader saying (I paraphrase) `I know this is what you want to hear'
and an aside to the editor saying `shall we leave this bit in'.

As for an explanation, well that's up to you to derive for yourself.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
there is no map / and a compass / wouldn't help at all