GRGR1 - In Praise of Rust

[S T Johnson]

I'll start by raising a reference which has so far not received
any mention p.5 para.4:

	'Bloat is one of the co-tenants of the place, a maisonette 
	 erected last century, not far from the Chelsea Embankment, 
	 by Corydon Throsp, an acquaintance of the Rossettis'....'

So what's the significance of the association with the Rossettis'? 
Just a further gothic Victorian touch? The Pre-raphaelite Brotherhood 
of the Rossettis must also have appeal to the pynchon world. Anyone 
know of any greater reason for the Rossettis maisonette housing the 
opening scene?

Now I spent the weekend thinking on all this puzzlement over rust. 
I was feeling I hadn't really understood the significance (because 
the usual rust associations of tarnished and decaying just didn't fit). 
Then I stumbled upon the following, which is an excerpt of a lecture 
given by John Ruskin in 1858 entitled 'In Praise of Rust' (it is 
to be found in The Faber Book of Science page 110):

'...in a certain sense, and almost a literal one, we may say that 
iron rusted is Living; but when pure or polished, Dead. You all 
probably know that in the mixed air we breathe, the part of it 
essentially needful to us is called oxygen; and that this substance 
is to all animals, in the most accurate sense of the word, 'breath 
of life' [Genesis 2:7]. Now it is this very same air which the iron
breathes when it gets rusty. The iron keeps all that it gets; 
we, and other animals, part with it again; but the metal absolutely 
keeps what it has once received of this aerial gift; and the ochreous 
dust which we so much despise is, in fact, just so much nobler than 
pure iron, in so far as it is iron and the air. Nobler, and more 
useful - for the main service of this metal, and all other metals, 
to us, is not in making knives, and scissors, and pokers, and pans, 
but in making the ground we feed from, and nearly all the substances 
first needful to our existence.... There is only one metal which 
does not readily rust ;  and that in its influence on Man hitherto, 
has caused Death rather than Life; it will not be put to its right 
use till it is made a pavement of, and so trodden under foot.

Here you have your hard bright, cold, lifeless metal - good enough 
for swords and scissors - but not for food. You think, perhaps that 
your iron is wonderfully useful in a pure form, but how would you 
like the world, if all your meadows, instead of grass, grew nothing 
but iron wire - if all your arable ground, instead of being made of 
sand and clay, were suddenly turned into flat surfaces of steel - if 
the whole earth instead of its green and glowing sphere, rich with 
forest and flower, showed nothing but the image of a vast furnace 
of a ghastly engine - a globe of black, lifeless excoriated 
metal? It would be that - probably it was once that; but assuredly 
it would be, were it not that all the substance of which it is made 
sucks and breathes the brilliancy of the atmosphere; and, as it 
breathes, softening from its merciless hardness, it falls into 
fruitful and beneficient dust; gathering itself again into the 
earths from which we feed, and the stones with which we build;'

He continues for several paragraphs eulogising iron's colouring 
of the Earth, before closing with:

'A nobler colour than all these - the noblest colour ever seen 
on this earth - one which belongs to a strength greater than 
that of the Egyptian granite, and to a beauty greater than that 
of the sunset or the rose - is still mysteriously connected with 
the presence of this dark iron. I believe it is not ascertained 
on what the crimson of blood actually depends; but the colour is 
connected, of course, with its vitality, and that vitality with 
existence of iron as one of its substantial elements. Is it not 
strange to find this stern and strong metal mingled so delicately 
in our human life that we cannot even blush without its help?'

Ruskin's use of the word vital in relation to rust, and the 
contrasting cold deathlyness of steel, would seem to fit that 
used by Pynchon, as David Evers wrote in his post: 

	p. 3 - iron railway tracks giving way to a coral-like and 
	mysteriously vital growth of rust

	p. 5 - Pirate's blanket an orange, rust and scarlet tartan

	p. 7 - the rooftop glasshouse is another crystal palace with 
	iron trusswork: how could any winter be gray enough to age 
	this iron that can sing in the wind?

Going further, Ruskin's 'fruitful and beneficient dust' feeding the 
earth is scarily close to the description (p.5 when Corydon Throsp 
is introduced) of the unbelievable black top soil in the glasshouse
which feeds the bananas.

Going back to my original poser, and increasing the entanglement, 
I examined John Ruskin's biography and found apart from his being known 
primarily as a social reformer and art critic he was also the great 
champion of the work of the then obscure pre-Raphaelites (his ex-wife 
even married one of the brotherhood). He also wrote a great rage against
the railways in one of his last works.

Does this all fit? Is there something else to the Rossetti reference?

stuart
-- 

Dr. S. T. Johnson	stj at holyrood.ed.ac.uk
			http://www.ed.ac.uk/~stj/homepage.html