Baseball Mandala

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

Well,  While the game of baseball has an anesthetizing effect on me, 
Steely's thoughts do not.  

What interests me is the missing talk of the Goddess.  Call me a sucker 
for a title, but Pynchon's obvious awareness of Graves' book, coupled 
with the endless "white faces" and other white things in GR, lead me to 
see this baseball issue differently.  I haven't got it all worked out 
like Steely has, but his mention of the "mound" at the center does call 
to mind the Goddess.  Something to do with sites of worship in Old 
Europe--you can read about it in any work on Goddess-worshipping 
societites from before the Neolithic era.  That there is such a thing as 
a pitcher's mound, located at the center, may be work thinking about.  
But it is my guess that these are all loosely related phenomenon that 
just happen to sound good.  Think about the phrase in question--so 
characteristically Pynchon, but also a bit of a parodic appeal in its 
status as a rather cliche narrative mode.  Makes you wonder just who's 
pitching what.  

But that's so much rambling.  I think one of the great things about such 
ambiguously allusive prose is that it DOES  "work out" for so many 
readers in so many diff ways.  I do mean this.  I'm not simply out for a 
quick conclusion.  This kind of ambiguity is a strength that Pynchon 
exercises often, to great effect.  

Bonnie