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

[David Casseres]

Googling the name "Zipf," I found this fascinating article:

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/zipfLaw.shtml

The part about Zipf's Law and Zipf is toward the end.  It could fit
right into a Pynchon narrative.

On 11/28/05, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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)
>
>