covers

[still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made]

I'm sharing this with the list b/c I thought it was insightful...

On Thu, 22 May 1997, Charles F. Albert wrote:
> count me in re: di Chirico!!!
> > Yes!  Great description.  Both of those, but esp. di Chirico, are fave
> > Surrealists of mine.
> > 
> > As I think about it, Pynchon often evokes the quiet menace, the
> > dark-shadows-at-noon, empty-courtyard, unseen-evil kind of feeling that di
> > Chirico does.
> 
> I apologize if this is laboring the obvious, but I believe C.'s 
> intent is to communicate less a sense of evil than a foreboding 
> anticipation (foreboding good OR bad). This would fit with the
> general visual themes of trains, stations and clocks. 

I guess I can agree with that.  But there does seem to be more a hint of
something negative than positive.  Wasn't there a famous di Chirico painting
called "Mystery and Melancholy of a Street," or am I getting that title from
something else?  The "melancholy" is always present...perhaps that's a
better term than evil. 

That may go for TRP in general as well.  Sometimes the paranoia is mixed
with, or maybe just a covering for, melancholia.

> I see the bleakness as a expression of loss for his father ( the train
> station architect), for whom he is said to have a profound love, rather
> than an implication of evil. 

Interesting.  I was not aware of that biographical detail.  The trains
always make me think of Mussolini "making the trains run on time,"  even
though that has no real connection... 

Max

 M a x i m u s  D a v i d  C l a r k e | while I crawl into the unknown/
          http://www.afn.org/~traveler | cover me/
                 "Surrealist-At-Large" | I'm going hunting for mysteries/
                      traveler at afn.org | cover me...  --bjork