VLVL2 (9.5): "The Thought Should Have Discouraged ..."

[Dave Monroe]

   "Next day, feeling mysteriously better, he was back
on the case [...], studying the road map like a racing
form till he'd handicapped the alternate routes and
imagined changes of plans associated with each, before
at last turning eastward and beginning his ascent to
the Retreat of the Kunoichi Attentives, an all-day
hard-edged video game, one level of difficulty to the
next, as the land rose and the night advanced.  Enough
of this, like travel in outer space, can begin to what
they call 'do things' to a man.[...]  What stopped his
forward progress for a second was the sight of DL,
hair incandescent, gelid green eyes set on full power,
head-on.  Try to keep in mind, he memoed himself, this
is the woman--who murdered you the other day!  But he
got a hardon instead and managed to forget everything
except that night at the Depaato of Spring, the
distant long-legged American girl astride him, riding
him as she would a beast, hair backlit, face kept to
itself in shadow--playing his body meridians with the
points of dark-lacquered fingernails ... killing him
in the process!  Terrific!  The thought should have
discouraged his erection but, stragely, didn't." (VL,
Ch. 9, p. 161)


"the alternate routes"

"She had heard all about excluded middles; they were
bad shit, to be avoided; and how had it happened here,
with chances once so good for diversity?" (Lot 49, Ch.
3, p. 181)

"Could he have been the fork in the road America never
took, the singular point she jumped the wrong way
from? ... It seems to Tyrone Slothrop that there might
be a route back" (GR, Pt. III, p. 556)


"turning eastward and beginning his ascent"

Cue "Pynchon 'n' 'Eastern' Philosphy" here ...


"an all-day hard-edged video game"

Cf. ...

"The other man tightened his lips, frowning. 
'Mm-hmm.'  He returned to his computer game, something
called 'Nukey,' which included elements of sex and
detonation, though the cheapness of its early chips
reduced orgasm to a thin rising whine, broken into
segments as if for breath, and made the presumably
nuclear explosions, no more than symbolized here by
feeble bursts of white noise, even less satisfying."
(VL, Ch. 9, pp. 159-60)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0311&msg=87355&sort=date

Sex 'n' death 'n' video games again ...


"gelid green eyes"

Main Entry: gel·id 
Pronunciation: 'je-l&d
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin gelidus, from gelu frost, cold --
more at COLD
Date: 1599
: extremely cold : ICY <gelid water> <a man of gelid
reserve -- New Yorker>

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

"As the distance between them gradually diminished
Mondaugen saw that her left eye was artificial: she,
noticing, his curiosity, obligingly removed the eye
and held it out to him in the hollow of her hand.  A
bubble blown translucent, its 'white' would show up
when in the socket as a half-lit sea green."  (V., Ch.
9, Sec. ii, p. 237)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0104&msg=54587&sort=date


"The thought should have discouraged ..."

And again ...

"Tacked to the wall next to Slothrop’s desk is a map
of London.[...]  The stars pasted up on Slothrop’s map
cover the available spectrum, beginning with silver
(labeled 'Darlene') sharing a constellation with
Gladys, green, and Katharine, gold, and as the eye
strays Alice, Dolores, Shirley, a couple of
Sallys-—mostly red and blue through here-—a cluster
near tower hill, a violet density about Covent Garden,
a nebular streaming on into Mayfair, Soho, and out to
Wembley and up to Hampstead Heath-—in every direction
goes this glossy, multicolored, here and there peeling
firmament, Carolines, Marias, Annes, Susans,
Elizabeths.  But perhaps the colors are only random."
(GR, Pt. I, p. 19) 

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/gr3.htm

Oh, Herr Doktor Freud ...

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