GRGR(9) Pointsman's dream

[Paul Mackin]

 From: MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu

> Since I see the tone (as well as the content) of 
> the dream as revealing something about Pointsman's utter desolation and
alienation 
> from human community (I am thinking of that beautiful prose/verse
passage--where the 
> heck is it?--da-da-DAH da-dah da-dah-dah, *but Pointsman's all alone*--verse
coded as 
> prose, I think it's close by where we are here), why not the grammar too? 
These tense 
> shifts further create the *dream* sense of slippage, of sliding slightly back
and forth as one 
> does in a dream where something can both be about to happen and can have
already 
> happened at the same time--

The paragraph you refer to starts at the bottom of p. 167. Pointsman is
brooding the loss of Pumm, Easterling, Dromond, Lamplighter,  and
Spectro.

Pointsman's dream seems both desolate and complex. Not just
one dream is involved. This particular (fateful) night's dream is a
recurrence of previous dreams. And "in recent days" the recurring
dream has rearranged itself. The light is different or something.
The passage is quite murky. The man is troubled to put it mildly.

One thing I do notice is that the recurring features of the dream
tend to be described in the present tense, while THE EVENTS
OF THIS PARTICULAR NIGHT come to us in the simple past tense
(the preterite, yet) . The different levels are hard to follow, but I think
such a distinction would hold. (Of course nothing will be 100 percent.
But the probabilities would be with us . . . )

Wonder if this kind of arrangement might hold up elsewhere
in the book. Is it the impression of others that much of what
happens in GR is habitual, conditioned, reflexive, slightly automatic?
Just as Pointsman's dream is habitual, recurring?   Is this
possibly why so much of the book is written in the present
and present perfect tense (or alternatively, using participial phases
and such like)? Pynch is exceedingly parsimonious
in his use of the simple past tense. Does he perhaps save it
for special occasions. Unique, nonhabitual happenings, with
possibly fateful implications. Like when Roger and Jessica decide
to go into the church. "Somewhere in Kent Roger and Jessica
CAME UPON a church." Or when Slothrop finds the little girl in
the wreckage. "Yesterday HAPPENED to be a good day.
They FOUND a child, alive, a little girl . . ." These occasional
reports of single events completed one time and only one
time in the past have a slightly startling effect when you
come to one.  

					P.