V.V. (14) Cheese Danish # 35

[jbor]

Slab's latest study seems to be Surrealist, a cross between a de Chirico 
(ominous stillness: "an empty street, drastically foreshortened" 282.16) and
a Dali (bizarre dream images: the Danish "impaled", the "ornate bird", the
gargoyle, the quasi-religious pun). Esther detects "allegory" (283.4); Slab
refutes this, claiming that interpreting the painting's message is on "the
same intellectual level as doing the Times crossword puzzle on Sunday."
Reflexively-speaking, I'd say that Pynchon is hinting that neither of these
interpretive modes is apt for the way meaning has been coded in this text.

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