MDMD - surveying V

[Doug Millison]

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned on the list, but in
re-reading V, it seems that surveying has been a theme for Pynchon for some
time. In chapter 7, "She hangs on the western wall," just after describing
his trip to Vheissu, Godolphin tells Victorian Wren, that after witnessing
the carnage at Khartoum, "And in two weeks this surveying business came up,
and I was in. I was always weasling in, you know, on some show where you
wouldn't expect to find naval personnel. This time it was escorting a crew
of civilian engineers into some of the worst country on earth. Oh, wild,
romantic. Contour lines and fathom-markings, cross-hatchings and colors
where before there were only blank spaces on the map. All for the empire."


D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com
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