VV(18): Clouds

[Dave Monroe]

"The clouds hung like leprous tissue." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 394)

"To the south, the light along the Champs Elysees picked out the underbelly 
of a nauseous-yellow cloud." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 398)

Cf. ...

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table ...

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes ...

T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Prufrock and Other 
Observations (1917), lines 1-3, 15-25 ...

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

"In 1959, Pynchon applied for a Ford Foundation fellowship; his application 
included an autobiographical sketch in which he reportedly details his 
literary development ...

"This brought him safely up to the present, to 1959, where he saw himself 
'entrenched on the T.S. Eliot side of no man's land' (from 'Thomas Pynchon 
at Twenty-Two: A Recovered Autobiographical Sketch' by Steven Weisenburger, 
American Literature, Volume 62, Number 4 [(December 1990): 692-97])."

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/bio/influences.html

Hm ... "The bass was small and evil-looking and his eyes were yellow with 
pinpoints in the center" (V., Ch. 5, Sec. ii, p. 59); "fingernails gone 
yellow with dead scalp" (V., Ch. 13, Sec. ii, p. 384); "Champs Elysees" = 
"Elysian Fields"; I believe Terrance et al. might have something to say on 
all this ...

"The next day the same clouds were over the city ..." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. ii, 
p. 403)




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