GRGR(6) Discussion Opener

[EHREH at aol.com]

>Guess I try a few more of Joe's questions:

>P. 83

>22) Why does Pynchon begin this section by writing in a script form?  
    What purpose/function does it serve?

I thought in rereading this chapter that there is an interesting movement
from the script like format, ie: dialogue on a page to the cinematic like
fade out of Pointsman and Mexico's discussion on the beach:

p.92 "We have lost them. No one listened to those early conversations -not
even an idle snapshot survives" 

We have lost them implies  radio waves or signal being lost to static. Right
before that line  the picture of them on beach pulls back to widen to
describe the  landscape with Blaegh and Ivy having sex in a bunker and then
the ice skater on the top of the cliff. Then the sort of cinematic fade out.

The question remains, if the chapter starts out as a script and ends with the
idea that the extemporaneous conversations between Pontsman and Mexico do not
survive (even though they are printed in front of us), what is P. saying
about his own form? I actually think he is revelling in an overabundance of
technique-using language to simulate as many technical conditions as
possible-and having a ball doing it.The telescoping effect of widening the
lens and pulling away as Wenders does at the end of his films has a strong
emotional effect.

the next  chapter begins by bringing  the camera literally into the scene by
using it as surveillance on Katje, (and as a literary device to allow us to
view her intimately.)