GR/evacuation/sirens

[David Casseres]

Excellent.  The screaming is all those and more.  There's a movie
called Chac, set among Maya Indians.  And there's a scene in it where
a condor is seen soaring over tropical mountains, and it screams.  And
the sound track makes that scream last for what seems like minutes. 
It's hair-raising, then you find out that that was also a man
screaming....

I identify the screaming in the first sentence, and its echo three
pages later, with the ICBM glimpsed at the end of the book, with arc
of the bouncing ball, and with "Snowballs have Flown their Arcs."  It
is the ur-scream, the god-cry.

On 10/29/05, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> On Oct 29, 2005, at 4:03 PM, Erik T. Burns wrote:
>
> > rob wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Offering up the idea that Pynchon wrote the word "evacuation",
> >> remembered that it is a word also used to refer to defecation,
> >> chuckled
> >> to himself and then moved on makes him sound like Benny Hill. In
> >> fact,
> >> it isn't even saying anything about the meaning of the text -- what
> >> it's suggesting is that the connotation of the word is a coincidental
> >> one (which it is in my opinion).
> >>
> >
> > what i think is that TRP is setting the scene for an extremely
> > complex novel
> > that carries among its main themes the close link between sex/death/
> > shit and
> > so on.
> >
> > pynchon's certainly not using "evacuation" in the beginning in the
> > Benny
> > Hill way; it is possibly coincidental (and indeed what other word
> > could he
> > use for evacuation in the sense of masses-flee-the-doomed-city
> > sense?) but
> > at the same time the whole first section (until Pirate wakes up)
> > has an
> > intestinal feel to it, velvety and in the dark, constricted and
> > smelly.
> >
> > so it's a neat coincidence, if that's what/all it is.
> >
> > as for the siren-or-rocket-or-both doing the screaming in line 1, i
> > don't
> > want to get tied down to any one reading. all clear or air raid
> > alert both
> > work, a rocket itself is also logical. a combination of two or
> > three of
> > these also works. obviously something has these people on the move,
> > it could
> > be the sound of the rocket, it could be a raid siren, it could be
> > the all
> > clear. it makes _sense_ that the sound heard in that line is the
> > all clear,
> > but that doesn't mean it's the only sound.
>
> There's the unending scream of humanity  Edvard Munch heard before
> taking up his brush.
>
> The scream of Fay Wray in the ape's fist.
>
> The scream of Katje into the pillow at orgasm after which she resumes
> questioning Slothrop about the rocket.
>
> The scream of Gottfried that awakens Weissman.
>
> Come to think,  Roger occasionally screams, as does Pointsman.
>
> In any event the scream across the sky is animate as well as inanimate.
>
>
> >
> > worth noting that the next rocket sound is a "crack-blast" on page 72.
> > (after page 4's equally ambiguous "Screaming holds across the sky."
> > that's
> > obviously the same screaming as in line 1.)
> >
> > do other rockets scream in GR? do sirens? yes they do, yes they do:
> >
> > page 215: "because sending the RAF to make a terror raid against
> > civilian
> > Lübeck was the unmistakable long look that said hurry up and fuck
> > me, that
> > brought the rockets hard and screaming, the A4s, which were to've
> > been fired
> > anyway, a bit sooner instead..."
> >
> > or
> >
> > page 409: "...and the Rocket crashed somewhere over in Peenemünde-
> > West, in
> > Luftwaffe territory. The dirty pillar of smoke drew the screaming fire
> > engines and truckloads of workers by in a wild parade."
> >
> > etb
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>