Chasing ... Cutting

[Dave Monroe]

Have been re(and re-, and re-, and re)reading those opening pages of GR again, and, speaking of
that "crystal palace," The Crystal Palace, maybe even that Kristallnacht, can't help but notice
the following (again, sorry 'bout neglecting the Bantam pagination, but this is all in the
first several pages of the book, in the first episode, easily located).  Pardon me if this has
already been covered, but ... well, of course, there's:

"He's afraid the glass will fall--soon--it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace"

But then ...

"Underfoot crunches the oldest of city dirt, last crystallizations of all the city had denied,
threatened, lied to its children."

"The great power station, and the gasworks beyond, stand precisely: crystals grown in morning's
beaker, stacks, vents, towers, plumbing, gnarled emissions of steam and smoke...."

"around the curve of the Earth, farther east, the sun ovre there, just risen over in Holland,
is striking the rocket's exhaust, drops and crystals, making them blaze clear across the
sea...."

In my frenzied reading of all the posts I received today, seem to recall the Kristallnacht
being mentioned in association with those "last crystallizations of all the city had denied,
threatened, lied to its children."  Which is a pretty solid reading, that Crystal Night being,
indeed, a "crystallization," figuratively, literally, of officially tolerated, encouraged,
enacted Nazi, popular, even, antisemitism in Germany.  The last quote is not quite so easily
read as a Holocaust reference, apart from, of course, that V-2 factor, but the "gasworks,"
those (Zyklon-B?) "crystals," "smoke" (and note one of Pynchon's pregnant ellipses there ...),
one might suggest "mourning" as a homophone of "morning" here, even.   Yes, I realize many of
you are just plain not interested in, even antagonistic toward, such a reading, but it's hardly
a tenuous one, it is NOT being made as a provocation to anyone here, and, once it had been
suggested (and not just by Doug and Otto, but by the text "itself"), well ...