GRGR1: Discussion opener for section 1

[Paul Murphy]

Some disconnected ruminations, initially in response to Joe Varo:

>Is it really so obvious?

Grammatically, at least, yes.

>The opening line of the next paragraph is "It is too late.".  What does
>"it" refer to in this sentence?  You have to ask this sentence two
>questions:
>
>1.  "It is too late" for what?
>            or
>2.  What is "it" which is "too late".

Both. Answer to 1. (provisionally): too late denotes a foreclosure of
possibility. Too late to run back and rescue what has gone before. I meant
to say this initially, but held off; but 'preterition' is not only a
Calvinist term, but also a twist on verb tenses: the 'has-been' (and may be
again) of historical time is 'perfect' (it has been, es ist gewesen); the
imperfect (it was, es war) is the 'preterite' tense: from the Latin
'praeterito'; see Augustine's Confessions: nihil de praeterito revocatur:
nothing of what has passed by can be recalled. It is too late to intervene,
too late to do anything. (The 'it' here is the empty pronoun of 'it is
raining').

2.: 'It' is the screaming of the rocket. The gap between speed-of-light and
speed-of-sound: "He takes some time lighting a cigarette. He won't hear the
thing coming in. It travels faster than the speed of sound. The first news
you get of it is the blast. Then, if you're still around, you hear the
sound of it coming in" (Penguin ed., 7). If you hear the screaming, it
literally is too late; it's already hit.

More on the phallic banana-rocket: "God has plucked it for him, out of its
airless sky, like a steel banana ... 'They're calling it premature
Brennschluss'" (8).

One more layer, which I don't think we've yet been contemplating; the
'nothing to compare it to now' might signify an unfathomable escalation of
technological destruction. The dream, I think, does involve the
'death-trains' of the Holocaust; but what I think TRP has in mind
throughout this passage is the shift from Holocaust to *nuclear* holocaust.
"To try to bring events to Absolute Zero" (3); the metaphorics of
(nuclear?) winter: "How could there be a winter -- even this one -- gray
enough to age this iron..." (7). The rocket is (also, in advance) the Bomb
(which we should know from the intro to _Slow Learner_).

Cheers,
Paul