GR P1 S1: "The Evacuation still proceeds..."

[David Casseres]

Anything goes, yes.  Our Man's writing is full of connections and
implications that don't really stand up to careful analysis, but they
are there nonetheless.  I don't believe for a moment that Pynchon
would write a word like Evacuation, directly referring to movement of
people out of a place, without it crossing his mind that it could also
refer to an emptying of the bowels.  Pynchon smiles briefly and moves
on, through the shifting and evanescent layers.  Is there a Crystal
Palace? Yes.  Is there a Crystal Night? Yes.  Are there still other
connotations to the word crystal, and will they appear as direct
meanings elsewhere in the book? Oh hell yes.

Everything about the writing encourages us to tune in to these, to
bark up every tree in the forest. We are to notice all these linkages
to the extent of our level of alertness, and be affected by them, even
to the length of being driven crazy, as I am by a certain inescapable
yet utterly incongruous association found in the last few lines of GR.
 It might be the wrong tree but it's a real tree.

On 10/26/05, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 26, 2005, at 5:12 AM, John Carvill wrote:
> rainbows, etc.
>
> Another: the question of how many alternative meanings to ascribe to
> 'evacuation'. *Is* it Pynchon's intention to load that word with multiple
> meanings here? How can we ever know this?  It didn't occur to me personally
> to think of evacuation in the bowel-emptying sense, but as soon as it was
> mentioned I couldn't help thinking of the piece of 'theatre' surrounding
> Katje's evacuation of her bowels for Pudding's dinner.
>
> In Pynchon, anything goes.
>
> Of course the word itself has both positive and negative connotations. There
> were the London evacuations of children, mothers with small children, the
> elderly and infirm  to the relative safety of the countryside   But
> "evacuation'" (German equivalent) was also used in the Wannsee
> protocol--evacuation of the Jews to the East. The events  in Pirate's dream
> are purely negative --no one is saved--and not directly related to a
> specific historic event, though the place seems to  be  wartime London.
> Rather this dreamt of evacuation is a sweeping transport of the literary
> entity which will became well known in later pages of the book as the
> Preterite to their doom and damnation.
>
> I have no doubt that readers back in '73 couldn't help  but think of the of
> the Jews. At the same time it must be noted that historically those charged
> with obtaining an Allied military victory--as represented  by Prirate and
> his employer--would not and could not have had the plight of Jews, even if
> it had been more fully understood, on the front burner of  their
> consciousness. If Pirate in fact was channelling the situation East, it
> would have been an extracurricular activity. not one sanctioned by the Firm.
>
>