V. (Ch 3) Itinerary

[jbor]

I love the V-image of the stain which finally "swam somewhere over the 
crowd, like a tongue on Pentecost" for poor harried Hanne in Section vii.
The synaesthesia of the stain being "the color of her headache" (90.4 up) is
something borrowed from one of Pynchon's mooted masters, V. Nabokov, perhaps
the archetypal synaesthete. Other artistic figures thought to have been
"afflicted" by synaesthesia include Beethoven, Rimbaud, Kandinsky, Joyce and
David Hockney.

See Richard E. Cytowic, _Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses_,
Springer-Verlag, New York, 1989.

best

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>From: "Paul Mackin" <pmackin at clark.net>
>To: "Pynchon-L" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary
>Date: Tue, Nov 28, 2000, 6:46 AM
>

> A question: what's the significance of the smashing of Lepsius's blue
> glasses? Hanne WANTS to smash them and Porpentine actually does--in section
> viii. Does this indicate some mysterious link between Hanne and Porpentine.
> In addition of course to the one between Herbert and Porpentine. Or is Hanne
> just generally fed up with men and politics? Questions, questions . . .