Rolling Stock

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Jeff sez:
"Maybe, but I found myself thinking that the smell is from the *absence* of
rolling stock.  And then I couldn't imagine what sour smell is left behind
on a little-used track or siding, after the last cars have pulled out.
Rust, soot, spilled coal, dampness, chill--something like ammonia?  I don't
have the chemistry to put it together.  Anybody else?  But I think it *is*
a vital question.  We do want to believe that all these obscurely precise
rhetorical flourishes really do *mean*, that there *is* "another mode of
meaning beyond the obvious," or whole constellations of them, that TRP
might just put us in touch with."


There may be more sinister implications.  I can't help associating the 
more neutral railroad term with "stock" in the animal, "stock yard" sense,
which also links with the train cars rolling toward Auschwitz.

Anyway, as much as one can be "sure" of anything in GR, the idea that Pirate
is dreaming Slothrop's dream also makes sense to me.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)