raptors RE: VV(18): The young girl ...

[Doug Millison]

Pynchon uses a prominent falcon image in Vineland; we see raptors hunting
(snowy owls) in M&D, too. And, Geli's owl attacks Slothrop in GR.

>From Tim Ware's index for M&D:
Owl
210; "terrible massed beat of their wings [...] Snowy Owl Year [...] white
visitors from afar" 513; 597


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Monroe [mailto:davidmmonroe at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 12:32 PM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: VV(18): The young girl ...


"Afterward Gerfaut the writer sat by a window,
discoursing on how for some reason the young
girl--adolescent or younger--had again become the mode
in erotic fiction." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 402)

[...]

And "Gerfaut" = "faucon gerfaut" = "gerfaucon" =
"gerfalcon" = "gyrfalcon" = falco rusticolus = why? 
Chicken hawk?  Ptarmigan hawk, more like ...

http://www.hawk-conservancy.org/priors/gyr.htm

Let me know ...

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