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

[jbor at bigpond.com]

When the connections are composed in one reader's mind and not in 
another's, who holds the trump card? If, for example, you say that the 
word "queen" in line 5 of the text refers to an effeminate male 
homosexual, can someone else say that it doesn't? In the context it's 
quite clear that it doesn't, of course, but it's there in the 
dictionary. Is it really "anything goes"? Or is it in fact "some things 
go and some things don't but if we don't ever mention the ones that 
actually don't go we can pretend that anything does go so that we can 
impose whatever meanings we want onto the text"?

best

On 28/10/2005, at 9:01 AM, David Casseres wrote:

> 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.
>