GRGR (33) - The Glass Sphere

[Dave Monroe]

Very good, thanks!  Had considered the light bulb allusion (which I imagine has
a bit of the gnostic "divine spark" about it), was on my way to the projector
thing (and recall the planetarium of TCOL49, "shall I project a world?"), and
that (very obvious, in retrospect) vacuum tube of a television, Dale Carter (The
Final Frontier) makes much of how pretty much everybody but a coupla guys had to
"experience" the moon landing via th' Tube ... but that "falling" thing, that is
an interesting question ...

David Morris wrote:

> The place Blicero describes is very similar to Hades.  Hades might be called
> an "afterlife," but it is occupied only with the faint shadows of those that
> were alive.  This fits well w/ Pynchon's space-age version:  "Hardly solid,
> no more alive than memories, nothing to touch... only their remote images,
> black and white film images, grained" (723.15)
>
> There is a topographic confusion as to this sphere's locus.  It's "very high
> and far away."  But is it an object (viewed from the outside) relative to
> the earth, or is it _surrounding_ the earth (and viewed from the inside), or
> is it neither?  "Gravity rules all the way out to the cold shpere, _there is
> always the danger of falling_"  Who's in danger of falling?  Those venturing
> from earth out to the colony, or is it the colonists as they swing and dive
> through the space within?  If they were to fall, where would the land?
>
> Another obvious connection w/ this sphere is the light bulb, especially
> considering that the colonist are projected images, and that the sphere
> contains a vacuum.  I imagine a frosted bulb with blurry flickering B&W
> images inside that rarely come into focus on the surface of the bulb.  This
> vacuum tube might also figure for the first television sets.  TV
> afterlife...
>
> David Morris
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