GRGR P1 S1 - Some Notes

Thu Oct 27 07:30:49 CDT 2005

Well, our Group Read seems to have begun, like GR, 'in media res'. So be
it!

Here goes an attempt to jot down a few thoughts on what I think of as
the first half of the first section, from the opening to "...should
Pirate happen across one on his next mission by parachute" which in my
relatively recent yet falling to pieces Vintage paperback from 2000 -
complete with Vintage's 'V' logo on front cover, back cover, and spine -
is the bottom of Page 5.

1. Screaming

Although I've read the book a couple of times, I still can't escape
seeing the opening pages and episodes through the eyes of a first time
reader, which of course I was not too long ago. Who could fail to be
struck by that opening line? And we pretty naturally make the reasonably
confident assumption that it's a Rocket that's doing the screaming
across the sky. But the second sentence of the book presents a puzzle
that could easily be missed, maybe because it sounds so good - it's like
poetry, as is much of what follows. Well I know this has been discussed
and debated over and over, but *why* is there nothing to compare it to
now? One thing maybe/not worth noting is that it's compare *to*, not
with, which generally means (I believe) you're comparing similarities
only, not differences. 

2. Girders

Again, the iron queen has been much discussed, compelling suggestions
including Queen Victoria and thus Victoria Station. Notice 'queen' is
not capitalised, neither is 'iron' for that matter. This strikes me as
being a typically impressionistic fragment of a dream, where you get a
very strong sense of something that would be difficult or impossible to
relate clearly to someone else.  This sort of potent, allusive imagery
is also characteristic of the experience generated by psychedelic drugs
such as certain types of mushrooms - those 'pharmaceutical plants'. In
addition to the queen, there is a lot of metal in the opening pages,
iron, lead, rust, etc. Then Pirate wakes up and his skull feels
metallic. Later of course there's that metallic Tchitcherine, and that
other sleigh-carriage, with its multiple levels and its "velvet
saloons".

3. Downtown

Some of the terms used in the dream seem more American than English to
me: "out of downtown", "loops of an underpass". I can't help associating
the word 'underpass' with all the JFK assassination documentaries I've
seen, so here I hear echoes of Dealey Plaza. It's been suggested before
that the opening dream is Pirate having Slothrop's dream which might
explain this. And of course this is another perennial debating point:
whose dream is this? Pirate? Slothrop?  And are we sure whoever is
dreaming actually wakes up. If we start the book in a dream sequence,
can we be confident the dream has ended?  

4. Knotting 

The famous "disentanglement from"/"progressive knotting into". This
seems like a sly wink to the reader, no? Here we go... And tangles,
knotting, etc. recalls labyrinths, threads, clews/clues, taffy-balls
etc. And who is on this train? Maybe us...

5. Light

The way we slide out of the dream and into Pirate's awaking is
beautifully done - that light 'percolating in' - and it would surely be
possible for a first-time reader to miss this, you'd only have to be
inattentive very briefly, let your mind wander just a little, maybe
distracted by the preceding confusion as to what's going on. But on a
second reading of the passage, a few echoes of the dream become apparent
in Pirate's actual surroundings - the many levelled room, the drunken
wastrels lying around, etc.

6. My name is... My name is...

In the first couple of pages, there's quite a lot to get used to, a lot
to take in, much potential confusion. Even after several reads who can
say we have the measure of everything that's going on? Then there's an
abrupt change of gear, we're suddenly told straight out "His name is
Capt. Geoffrey ("Pirate") Prentice." Is this a deliberate sop to the
reader, maybe a lifeline thrown to the floundering first-timer? A chance
to catch up? Pynchon's pace changes, and the rich density of the whole
thing, remind me of Miles Davis's electronic period. Yes: Gravity's
Rainbow *is* Bitches Brew!

7. Falling 

As Pirate wakes up, "above him, he hears cloth rip": what's falling
isn't a rocket or invisible glass but Bloat. This Bloat, bannister, bed
sequence is the first incidence of slapstick, a sudden change of tone.
Something else an uninitiated reader will have to get used to.

8. Corydon Throsp, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea Embankment 

An anagram? Corydon is obviously close to Croydon is South London but
what of it? Throsp seems very ungainly if not part of an anagram. Having
said that I can't come up with anything. Anyway this is a pretty posh
address for this lot is it not? Kensington? The area includes the famous
Chenye Walk where Keith Richards, not unfamiliar with Osbie Feel's kind
of mushrooms, once lived. Also Rossetti, who we're told Throsp is on
nodding terms with. Rosetti's wife died of a drug overdose, he took to
keeping wombats as pets, one of these wombats used to attend the dinner
table, and was said to have provided the inspiration for the Dormouse
character in Alice in Wonderland, whose advice ("feed your head") was
used at the end of Jefferson Airplane's Alice & mushroom flavoured song
'White Rabbit'. Way later on in the book, Slothrop has a dream in which
a statue of the White Rabbit in Llandudno is giving him sage advice, but
he loses it as he wakes. Oddly enough, the drug that killed Rosetti's
wife was laudanum, which isn't very different from 'Llandudno'. Of
course that's almost certainly just a (?) coincidence, but all of the
foregoing is the sort of stuff you end up digging up by chasing after
the countless references Pynchon sews into the fabric of the book.

9. Scumbling

"..all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons,
to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil.."

Didn't notice 'scumbled' first time round, I was going too fast. Second
read I looked it up. Scumbled? Isn't that some sort of painting
technique? Pynchon make a mistake there? Mean to say scrambled?
Hmmmmmmmm. Then I thought of the 'knives' bit, wondered if artists might
use a palette knife to do this scumbling business. A Google search for
"scumble knife palette " found me this:

http://www.messums.com/sub_newsview.ink?nid=11191

"Hard impasto ridges left by the edge of the knife provided the texture
I needed to bring the waves crashing in."

Impasto eh? I thought that just meant paste. So the knives in "knives of
the seasons" makes perfect sense. And Dictionary.com throws up another
interesting nugget:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scumbled

"To blur the outlines of: a writer who scumbled the line that divides
history and fiction." 

Apt example!

10. Camera

"..in exchange for a German camera, should Pirate happen across one on
his next mission by parachute."

This deftly establishes that Prentice goes on missions behind enemy
lines, he's not the desk-bound type. Also the first overt mention of
Germans. And the casual mention of the camera prefigures a lot of
photograhy and film stuff to come.

Finally........ I was curious enough to do that little bit of digging on
Rosetti, which isn't so hard these days with Google, wikipedia etc.
Anyway, it was sad and poignant to note that:

"Rossetti's later years were darkened by his drug addiction and his
increasing mental instability. He died at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent,
England." Shades of The White Visitation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti

"Rossetti described the sonnet form as a 'moment's monument', implying
that it sought to contain the feelings of a fleeting moment, and to
reflect upon their meaning. The House of Life was a series of
interacting monuments to these moments - an elaborate whole made from a
mosaic of intensely described fragments. This was Rossetti's most
substantial literary achievement."

How about that "a mosaic of intensely described fragments"?

Thought it worth wuoting this, from the beginnig of the aforementioned
'The House of Life':

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/thslf10.txt

"A Sonnet is a moment's monument,--
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient."

Think P would have liked that 'impearled'.

Ok, that's my one and a half cents' worth for now.

Cheers

JC

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