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

[David Casseres]

It's all a matter of degree, this business of "what goes." In Pynchon,
in Shakespeare, wherever the Encyclopedist meets the Poet.

On 10/28/05, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 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.
> >
>
>