MDDM 63 Thunder and Stogies

[Monte Davis]

> If I was put on the spot to devote myself to a single
> topic/topos/sign/signifier/whatever in those
> Pynchonian texts, it's be those thunderbolts et al.

Agreed. Recycling a post from the first MDMD five years ago:

***

"The Wind has begun to shake the Tents. The Surveyors hear the stumbling of
Rain-drops against the taut Duck. Their Candle-Flames are being torn to
shining waxen wild-flowers. 'I am assuming that I may be confident of my
safety here,' Dixon puffing, 'the entire issue of Lightning in America
having been resolv'd by your Friend Dr. Franklin, who draws it off at will,
easy as drawing Ale from a cask... Ah have got that correct, haven't Ah?
'Tis certainly the right place for Lightning, eeh! Nothing like this in
Staindrop! Lud Oafery did claim to've been hit once over by Low Dinsdale,
but there were no other witnesses,--'
   'Dixon, our, um, Lives? are in Danger?'
   'Hardly enough to interrupt a perfectly good--' Here he is silenc'd by
an immense Thunder-Bolt directly overhead, as their frail Prism is bleach'd
in unholy light..."

Honest to God, I don't know another written voice in this language who can
jump so sprightly from

The beauty of that candle-flame simile, to

The warm silly dialogue veering into dialect with nods to Sterne and Monty
Python, to

The authentic Voice of Thunder, that ol' Joyce an' Eliot an' V2-warhead _da
dayadhvam damyatta_, enlightened by yer basic American pyramid mysticism
(cf the glowing eye over the "prism" on a $1 bill)...

...AND MAKE EACH JUMP DEAD SOLID PERFECT, landing poised, in perfect pitch,
taking off again, like Mozart or Ella Fitzgerald.

This is a masterpiece, foax. We're lucky to be alive and reading it.

***

I also suggested "as above, so below" as a recurring theme at that time. It
occurs to me now <d'oh!> that lightning is the Connection...

-Monte