GRGR2: Discussion Opener for Section 2

[Andrew Dinn]

Foax,

Well, it's Friday and time to start discussing section 2/reading
section 3. As per last time I have a few questions prepared but before
we get into that I'll remind you that discussion will continue until
Friday 18/10/96 by which time you should also have read and be ready
to discuss section 3. The page numbers for section 3 are pp 29 - 42
and the section opens with

    On the wall, in an ornate fixture of darkening bronze . . .

and closes with

    They are in love. Fuck the war. 


In case you need any reminders for posting protocols or want to know
exactly what the GRGR is all about take a look at:

    http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~andrew/pynchon-group-read.html

Now here are some openers for the GRGR(2) discussion:


1)  This section is quite difficult to draw any broad themes out of
    since it is i) full of lots of lovely itty-bitty details,
    beautifully rendered but disparate and ii) delivering a whole load
    of stage directions and scenery which introduce but certainly
    don't explore in detail later obsessions. It would be interesting
    to know what people thought was going on the first time they read
    this scene and maybe contrast with what they saw on their latest
    reading.

2)  Bloat's hairbrushes are `exquisite' but the girl at the desk is
    `gum-popping' (p 17). There is loads of US English mixed in with
    the UK English. Whose voice is it?

3)  Why is 8:20 a mythical hour? (p 17)

4)  Who are the curious gods' offspring to whom the `provisional
    pyramids' (p 17) have been erected?

5)  What purpose do the many lists of objects (e.g. Slothrop's deskful
    of bureaucratic smegma) serve?

6)  `he's a sort of American George Formby' - Slothrop or Pynchon? or
    maybe Tiny Tim?

7)  I suppose there has to be a question about the map, so err... what
    about that map?

8)  What does TDY mean? As in `orders sending him TDY some hospital out
    in the East End' (p 20)

9)  `Atlantics aplenty' - what does William's out and back journey
    signify?  What is the significance of this vast open space
    separating the US from Europe? How does it serve to define, at
    least in part, America and Americans (and why not also Europeans?)

10) Hooker was one of the early Puritan settlers in the US wilderness,
    adding a certain grand historical or maybe even messianic overtone
    to the image of garden love vs wild love. For goodness sake,
    someone please draw in colonialism, Puritanism, the chaos/order
    divide, technology, nature in the raw, science vs revelation,
    Hawthorne, Melville, . . . knot them all in! Oh and is the rest of
    Hooker's writing so melodious?

11) There are certain phrases in this section which are breathtakingly
    beautiful, not just Slothrop's coda to the Hooker. Try otu the
    samples below and see if you can make out exactly why they strike
    one as so apt, so precise, so sharp.

    `Flagstones are slippery with mist. It is the dark hard
    tobacco-starved, headachy, sour-stomach middle of the day, . . .'
    (p 17)

    `It's a stale-smoke paper warren, at the moment nearly deserted,
    its black typewriters tall as grave markers' (p 17)

    `He likes to tell them about fireflies. English girls don't know
    about fireflies, which is about all Slothrop knows for sure about
    English girls.' (p 22)

    `It cannot be put down to the usual loud-mouthed American
    ass-banditry, except as a fraternity-boy reflex in a vacuum, a
    reflex Slothrop can't help, barking on into an emoty lab, into a
    wormholing of echoing hallways, long after the need has vanished
    and the brothers gone to WW II and their chances for death.' (p 22)

    `he can save a moment here or there, the days again growing
    colder, frost in the morning, the feel of Jennifer's breasts
    inside cold sweater's wool held to warm in a coal-smoke hallway
    he'll never know the daytime despondency of . . . cup of Bovril a
    fraction down from boiling searing his bare knee as Irene, naked
    as he in a block of glass sunlight, holds up precious nylons one
    by one to find a pair that hasn't laddered, each struck flashing
    by the light through the winter trellis outside . . . nasal hep
    American girl voices singing out of the grooves of some disc up
    through the thorn needle of Alison's mother's radiogram . . .
    snuggling for warmth, blackout curtains over all the windows, no
    light but the coal of their last cigarette, an English firefly,
    bobbing at her whim in cursive writing that trails a bit behind,
    words he can't read . . .' (p 23)

    `. . . a Word, spoken with no warning into your ear, and then
    silence forever. Beyond its invisibility, beyond hammerfall and
    doomcrack, here is its real horror, mocking, promising him death
    with German and precise confidence, laughing down all of tantivy's
    quiet decencies . . . no, no bullet with fins, Ace . . . not the
    Word, the one Word that rips apart the day. . . .'  (p 25)

12) `Death is a debt to nature due, which I have paid and so must you'
    (p 26) Is this taken from someone's writing or just traditional,
    anonymous stuff. What about the Star-spangled banner meter verse.
    The Diskinson can be found in the Collected Works only watch out
    for `Ruin is formal devil's work' (p 28) which is a 2nd verse to a
    far more mundane opener.

13) Why are `Shit, money and the Word' (p 28) the `three American
    truths'?

14) Constant, Variable, . . . Quadratic? Cubic? Quartic? a progression
    by integration rather than differentiation. Slothrop `hangs at the
    bottom of his blood's avalanche' (p 25) the outward fanning A of
    generation contrasts with the narrowing V of ancestry which ends
    at Slothrop, the accumulation of siblings at each stage tied to a
    corresponding dilution of fortune for the family members. Both
    principles appear neatly squeezed into that one word AVAlanche.
    Can you identify this theme of `decline in increase' elsewhere in
    the novel?

15) If the rocket is also the `great bright hand reaching out of the
    sky' then is it a messenger? and is its message one of death or
    revelation?


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.