GRGR2: The Dream

[Curt Gardner]

I have to go along with the reading by Chris that the opening pages of GR 
are Pirate having Slothrop's dream.  Most convincing to me is the 
paragraph on page 26 starting with "It was one of those great iron 
afternoons..." - not only do we find the word iron, but also the phrase 
"brown as aging indoor wood, brown growing deeper, approaching black", 
the description of busses moving through "long concrete viaducts."  This 
is Slothrop's description of that day, Friday, Sept. 8, 1944 when the first 
rocket falls from the sky, the first time that Slothrop is "really scared."

>From the opening pages, "Inside the carriage, which is built on several 
levels, his sits in velveteen darkness, with nothing to smoke..."  
(wouldn't Slothrop want a cigarette?) "secret entrances of rotted 
concrete that only looked like loops of an underpass . . . certain 
trestles of blackened wood" "velvet black surfaces contain the movement:  
the smell is of old wood"

Curt Gardner
gardner at haas.berkeley.edu