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

[jbor at bigpond.com]

Indeed. And this is quite different from the "anything goes" approach, 
as illustrated by the "queen" (line 5) example given.

best

On 31/10/2005 David Casseres wrote:

> 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.
>>>
>>
>>
>