LA explained (who's he kidding?)

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

> I read it, like most I think, that the rocket (now maybe generalized) is 
> about to land on the Orpheus Theatre (on Melrose) as the book ends. 
> Don't remember its being brought up before on the P-list, but I haven't 
> been on very long either. The close textual juxtaposition of the events (among 
> other clues, I think) just seems to outweigh the _timing_ problems 
> (seventies vs forties). I guess I figured that if characters, rockets
> and plotlines were coalescing right and left, why not _time_.
[...]
> Hope others will be heard from on this.

Here goes mine own: the postWW2 world's dominant 
reality-manufacturing device (24 frames per second) is the movie, and 
the twenty-fout hour movie under the rug (wig? what?) I see as both 
television and the equivalent of the "man's office in our head". Anyway, 
we are having our life defined for us in the movi(ng) theatre, forgetting 
that this is only so much cosmetics, as the gun, the rocket, the violence 
of Their structure is always there, and could break through the roof at 
any moment. In Vineland this is explained quite explicitly, too:
      "... the two separate worlds - one always includes a camera 
     somewhere, and the other always includes a gun, one is 
     make-believe, one is real" (241)

hg
hag at iafrica.com