VV(11): Submarine Country

[Dave Monroe]

"On the Lexington Avenue downtown he saw a bum lying across the aisle,
diagonal on the seat  He was king of the subway.  He must have been
there all night, yo-yoing out to Brooklyn and back, tons of water
swirling over his head and he perhaps dreaming his own submarine
country, people by mermaids and deep-sea creatures all at peace among
the rocks and sunken galleons ..." (V., Ch. 8, Sec. 1, p. 215)

Okay, the Lexington Avenue subway line, then, very good.  But the "king
of the subway," you'll note, has a greater amplitude, has a further
apocheir than our Profane protagonist, who "wanted to stay in Manhattan"
(p. 214).  Again, see that map ...

http://www.nycsubway.org/maps/historical/1959_a.gif

But to continue.  On that "submarine country," cf., of course, not only
Pierce Inverarity's artificial galleon-and-skeleton strewn Fangoso
Lagoons in The Crying of Lot 49, but also the following  ...

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown

>From T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917), lines
124-31, conveniently online @

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

Not to mention that "atomic" submarine ride at Disneyland, e.g., ...

"Richard Nixon and his family were the first passengers on the ride,
which featured a trip past a graveyard of sunken ships.  The real
meaning of atomic weapons technology had been contained through its
transformation into an amusement."

>From p. 86 of Mark Langer, "Why the Atom is Our Friend: Disney, General
Dynamics and the USS Nautilus," Art History, Vol. 18, No. 1 (March
1995), pp. 63-96.  Or  the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, for that
matter.  See ...

Fjellman, Stephen M.  Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and
    America.  Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992.

... pp. 276, 339, 340.  By the way, again, I've not been to The Big
Apple, but I have taken the BART under San Francisco Bay to Berkeley and
back again.  A truly humbling experience, actually, felt regal only in
the sense of "royally scared," but was pleased nonetheless fortuitously
to have the Stone Roses b-side "Going Down" on the mix tape in my
Walkman.  "Ring a ding ding ding, I'm going down" ...