GRGR Pirate's mistake? / what is They / structure / 1,4

[Cometman]

Tesauro Terrance wrote:
>none

I am going to search for your back postings in the Archive, if that's
all right (honorific of your choice)


Pirate's mistake is being a big mean mother? maybe?
or appearing that way to Slothrop?
If he's one knight (black?), and Gerhardt von Goell is the other
(white?), a mistaken move from him this early will require either
mistakes on the other side and/or some deft recoveries on the part of
black for the game to remain interesting

Why did Nabokov find chess so fascinating?  He was a man of his time
and class; in "Speak, Memory" there's a poem about his first view of
Africa which utilizes his talent for coinages to rhyme "Afrique" with
the non-pc "Kaffrique" - takes the sting out of it in my view.  Picture
young Mr (Count?) Nabokov meeting the gaze of the young Kaffrique...
...and with his color perceptions!  
A chessboard has a "We" and a "They", doesn't it?
Hypothesis: They are a frightening presence in GR because the "We"
isn't fully developed in Slothrop.  They are a frightening presence IRL
because they have weapons and do not hesitate to use them.  RC inspires
Zoyd to back down - a-and, he's got the only good marriage in Vineland
- but he's not They, is he?  But he did Their bidding for awhile, and
came out of it with something in his eyes that "we" - if indeed the
we/they hypothesis holds thru Vineland - don't mess with, yet yes
indeedy I believe "we"/Zoyd/me (i pretty thoroughly identify with Zoyd)
do get to become friends with him and indeed share some moments on the
creek with his kids which if that ain't close enough ...well, i'm
gettin' all emotional with it...
anyway, Pirate does Their bidding and gets out of Africa (need to rent
that movie sometime, heard it was good - wasn't the author of it
somebody that Holden Caulfield would like to just call up and talk to?)
gets (part of a sublease on) a maisonette, gets to fight evil, gets to
grow them bananas

Structure: Pirate's mistake - I'm still not absolutely clear on.  A
mistake I've made is not to pay enough attention to the paragraph in
1,2 about structure.  I've resolved to go back into the archives of the
group reads in 1996 and 1999, (thanks, you who posted the starting
points) and see what's been said on that topic.

--------------------

1,4 - it's all so freakin' good, you can pick a place at random and
just start digging 
like Slothrop in the rubble which i blathered about yesterday, not
doing it justice.  Here's Slothrop's mistake, maybe: "But too many were
dying, and presently, seeing no point, he stopped." (prayin' to God)
p24, ln 27-28 -- / he stops invoking, conventionally, since he's
disenchanted with its results.  Yet rather than find an unconventional
way to keep his thoughts positive, his spirit pulling for the optimal
outcome, to weigh in somehow on the side of good...or maybe I'm reading
too much in here to this...maybe i shouldn't be disappointed that he
gives up.

But the next paragraph begins, "Yesterday happened to be a good day."
(p24, ln 29) - If he'd been praying, he could be thankful for that...
Even if not praying, he's still given a grace but only feels stupid.  

But without harping overly on that, how about that graveyard? 
Nah, I'm not ready, though we harken forward to that place and its
inhabitants immediately on p 25, ln 1,2,3 - "He hangs at the bottom of
his blood's avalanche, 300 years of western swamp-Yankees, and can't
manage but some nervous truce with their Providence."
He knows it, in other words.  Their Providence, that of his ancestors
(the avalanche of his blood - let's kick "blood ran cold" up a notch,
shall we?  And tie in to the blood-meaning-family at the same time! M4d
skillz) Not "Their" Providence...or are they "They" -- is he worried
that the God of his Fathers who's been invoked to sanction invasions of
BFE since time immemorial isn't/yet is providing this Providence (that
wasn't well expressed) - that the old dictum "the sacrament is still
efficacious though the priest be unworthy" isn't applying...or is he
just shell-shocked
-- and if he's shell-shocked, imagine how the people that got blown up
must feel.