GRGR 1:5- "...laminar and gently singing" / apologies to any Snoxalls

[Michael Bailey]

On 11/28/05, jbor wrote:
> I read this descriptively. The flame is leaf-shaped and gently singing,
> i.e. making a songlike, hissing sound (as distinct from "singeing", in
> other words).

This relates in my mind to the "story tree" in Vineland

The "changes in the room's air pressure" are caused by
> the entry and exit of people into hotel, as per the very next sentence:
> "It [the flame] registers visitors as they enter and leave ... "
>
> Thus we're introduced to a seance in the side room of a crowded English
> pub. The setting (like Pirate's maisonette and the hothouse) is vividly
> rendered by Pynchon, and in a very economical way.
>

the name of the pub, Snoxall's, is the name of a Bantu dictionary that
came out in 1967 http://www.yourdictionary.com/languages/nigecong.html
the Snoxall's is about halfway down the page.

So the name may not have been chosen for onomatopoeia, and I apologize
to all the Snoxalls, who may feel free to deride the name "Bailey"

In addition to studying Herero, then, our author may have dipped into
Bantu.  For some reason (probably, Pirate-like, my background set me
up for this) I always wanted to hear the theme song to "To Sir, With
Love" (1967) as "A Bantu taught me right from wrong/and weak from
strong, that's a lot to learn"

> Apart from the connection between 19th C. Spiritualism and Freudian
> psychology which is being established here, I think the major insight
> we get in the first part of this section is into Jessica's character.
> She's very self-centred.

but also a good darts player

>
> The "slender medium" is Carroll Eventyr, btw.
>
> best
>
>

The Companion detangled my understanding of the seance.  Somehow the
control, Peter Sachsa, is able to reach the departed husband (Roland)
of Selena Feldspath.  It's interesting that Roland's words about
control come through the control - Sachsa - who is (was) an anarchist.

"Once transected into the realm of Dominus Blicero, Roland found that
all the signs had turned against him....Lights he had studied so well
as one of you, position and movement, now gathered there at the
opposite end, all in dance...irrelevant dance.  None of Blicero's
traditional progress, no something new...alien....Roland too became
conscious of the wind, as his mortality had never allowed him. 
discovered it so...so joyful, that the arrow must veer into it.  The
wind had been blowing all year long, year after year, but Roland had
felt only the secular wind...he means, only his personal wind. 
Yet...Selena, the wind, the wind's everywhere...."
(Penguin, 30, 12-21)

Roland (the association is with questing), is "transected" - when a
line is transected, it is divided.
(He was) once transected (divided) in Blicero's realm, but finds in
death a different pattern and a freedom.

Blicero's "traditional progress" being the march of civilization, the
white man's burden, manifest destiny; Roland freed in death from those
patterns by which he had lived now perceives the wind of freedom.

Filtered through Sachsa, of course --- how reliable is he?
And, (as I wonder about Yeats's spouse's automatic writing) does the
medium have an agenda?

Then, let's see
Jessica fondles the darts ("brass throats and breasts" 31, 8-9)
a bomb makes the sensitive flame go out
Jessica hits a bullseye
The medium comes out of the trance and the circle breaks up
Jessica talks with Gloaming, who's a bit shy (but smart: perfect tripos)
Zipf's Principle of Least Effort - explained in the Companion, but I
can almost get the math of this... - there really is a Zipf (thanks,
Companion)

So faced with a possible after-death communication, Gloaming is using
his formidable intellect to categorize it into a psychiatric
pigeonhole...

The mention of Pirate brings him (the segue involves a zooming out
from Jessica and Milton Gloaming, to place, encompass, describe and
categorize Snoxall's - "...winter rain at the windows.  Time for
closeting, gas logs, shawls against the cold night, snug with your
young lady or old dutch or, here at Snoxall's, in good company." (32, 
28-30)  and then focus in on Pirate, elsewhere on the premises)

And we're almost back in his reverie, about his development, and how
he feels slighted by Them.
However, hasn't he missed an opportunity to advance in their company? 
"ah very good, Captain .... jolly good and why not do it actually for
us sometime at the Club"
(33, 16-18) -- a proper show of eagerness here, and wouldn't he be in
like Flynn?
But the reason he doesn't (or, can't?) do that, perhaps, is linked to
the fact that he feels more at home "here at Snoxall's" (33,21)