VV(18): Kimono & Lime

[Terrance]

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/aug98/897942620.Ch.r.html

"A chaos of flesh. But as Su Feng, lit by hydrogen, oxygen,
a cylinder of lime, moving doll-like..." 



Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> "And finally, the kimono, translucent and dyed
> rainbowlike with sunbursts and concentric rings of
> cerise, amethyst, gold and jungly green." (V., Ch. 14,
> Sec. i., p. 397)
> 
> J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to V. (Athens: U of
> Georgia P, 2001) again goes right to my immediate
> sources here ...
> 
> "Dugdale sees this as the kimono of 'the suicidal
> Madame Butterfly' (97), while Eddins claims that it
> clearly links her with 'the congeries of iridescent
> Vheissu images and thus with the inanimate' (Eddins
> 74-75)." (p. 174)
> 
> Citing ...
> 
> Dugdale, John.  Thomas Pynchon: Allusive Parables
>    of Power.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.
> 
> Eddins, Dwight.  The Gnostic Pynchon.
>    Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.
> 
> 1990 having been a hell of a year for Pynchoniana.
> But I'm reminded not only of the solar allusions
> throughout the chapter ("sunbursts"), not only of the
> "jungle" into which Melanie's mysterious father might
> have disappeared ("jungly greens"), not only of the
> alleged circularity of "gravity's rainbow" in a
> different novel entirely ("concentric rings of ..."),
> but also ...
> 
> 1 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened
> in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it
> were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up
> hither, and I will shew thee things which must be
> hereafter.
> 
> 2 And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a
> throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
> 
> 3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a
> sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the
> throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
> 
> Revelations 4:1-3 ...