GR/evacuation/sirens

[Erik T. Burns]

rob wrote:

>Offering up the idea that Pynchon wrote the word "evacuation",
>remembered that it is a word also used to refer to defecation, chuckled
>to himself and then moved on makes him sound like Benny Hill. In fact,
>it isn't even saying anything about the meaning of the text -- what
>it's suggesting is that the connotation of the word is a coincidental
>one (which it is in my opinion).

what i think is that TRP is setting the scene for an extremely complex novel
that carries among its main themes the close link between sex/death/shit and
so on.

pynchon's certainly not using "evacuation" in the beginning in the Benny
Hill way; it is possibly coincidental (and indeed what other word could he
use for evacuation in the sense of masses-flee-the-doomed-city sense?) but
at the same time the whole first section (until Pirate wakes up) has an
intestinal feel to it, velvety and in the dark, constricted and smelly.

so it's a neat coincidence, if that's what/all it is.

as for the siren-or-rocket-or-both doing the screaming in line 1, i don't
want to get tied down to any one reading. all clear or air raid alert both
work, a rocket itself is also logical. a combination of two or three of
these also works. obviously something has these people on the move, it could
be the sound of the rocket, it could be a raid siren, it could be the all
clear. it makes _sense_ that the sound heard in that line is the all clear,
but that doesn't mean it's the only sound.

worth noting that the next rocket sound is a "crack-blast" on page 72.
(after page 4's equally ambiguous "Screaming holds across the sky." that's
obviously the same screaming as in line 1.)

do other rockets scream in GR? do sirens? yes they do, yes they do:

page 215: "because sending the RAF to make a terror raid against civilian
Lübeck was the unmistakable long look that said hurry up and fuck me, that
brought the rockets hard and screaming, the A4s, which were to've been fired
anyway, a bit sooner instead..."

or

page 409: "...and the Rocket crashed somewhere over in Peenemünde-West, in
Luftwaffe territory. The dirty pillar of smoke drew the screaming fire
engines and truckloads of workers by in a wild parade."

etb