GRGR 1,1 (was "Aquatic bint") the rest of my comments on 1,1 (odd lot)

[Cometman]

correction
--- Cometman <cometman_98 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 2) It's also a sign, within the dream's logic, of a certain
> alienation
> from the whole process, an alienation also alluded to just above: "it
> will be a spectacle-the fall of a crystal palace" 

"just above" should be "just below" of course
---------------------------------------------------------

Random musings (9 of them) holding the Penguin...
--- 
1) p3, para 3 --- carriage's occupants: "feeble ones, second sheep" 
wha's a 2nd sheep, then?  Like a 2nd fiddle, only sheepish?

2) same para --- "view finder" -- camera or rifle scope?  Camera sounds
more likely to me (in keeping with Gerhardt Goell and the many many
filmic references), but I was impressed a few days ago somebody saw
this as a missed assassination attempt... 
>From inside the carriage, he's looking at his fellow occupants, but
it's dark. I think this is actually 2 different comparisons
a) they're "half-silvered" like faces in a view finder (the cameras
I've had used glass for the viewfinder, but if the glass is old, maybe
it gets silvery?)
b) also, (or "or") they are obscured like one remembers VIPs looking,
whom one's seen from outside their limousine...a mingling of previous
Elect status with these preterite folks' current reality 

3) p3, para 4 --- "archways, secret entrances of rotted concrete that
only looked like loops of an underpass"
a) but what are they really?  Oneirically I guess it's enough that they
aren't what they seem, same as the Evacuation is only a show...I can't
think of many other things that look like that.  Sewer culverts (but
the carriage is still on some kind of track, which wouldn't be in a
culvert), mine adits, maybe even the arches of aqueducts or ancient
arenas?  This is a ghost highway like the Eisenhower Memorial Highway
(? I think that is the name) in Vineland.  
b) the Katrina evacuation, just as sad as this dream sequence.

4) same para -- "blue shadows to seal its (rust's?) passage"
this I just don't get, how do blue shadows seal the passage of rust? 
Dream-logic?  I parse it as "rust develops on these disused tracks,
especially at dawn when blue shadows seal its passage"

5) next sentence "to try to bring events to Absolute Zero" - well, the
section title is Beyond the Zero, so apparently the evacuation is
bringing us there.  (Pynchon's earlier story "Entropy" comes to mind)

6) p4, first full paragraph --- "Globular lights...unlit for
centuries....remote wings empty all this time just reopened to
accommodate the rush of souls"
are we in Purgatory?  (That Royalist fussbudget TS Eliot comes to mind:
"I had not dreamed death had undone so many")

7)  same paragraph, "a moving wood scaffold open on all sides....At
each brown floor, passengers move on and off..."
-- and then on p5, 2nd full paragraph: "Teddy Bloat is about to
fall...having chosen to collapse just at the spot where somebody...had
kicked out two of the ebony balusters"
--- undoubtedly reading into this, but I get a strong impression of the
"vast, very old and dark hotel" on page 5, with all its different
levels, having coalesced into the multi-floored maisonette.
Not only that, but (going beyond anything suggested in the text), the
old hotel is like history in a way, with the inhabitants of each era
waiting for our attention.  So for the part of my mind still in the
dream, Teddy Bloat would stand for Theodore Roosevelt, and Pirate saves
him by cushioning his fall with the cot where he's recently been having
the dream. The implications of this are clear in my mind, but hard to
put into words.  (Bloat's a co-tenant in the maisonette, just as TR has
some kind of lease in 20th century history; Bloat wears a mustache as
did TR; Bloat is in charge of some of Slothrop's training later on the
Riviera, and has sinister sides just as TR's pugnacity and indomitable
spirit - admirable as it may be spun to have been - was in service of
monstrously unjust neo-colonial butchery...etc, etc)

8) Osbie Feel -- 
a) first name: "Osborn: Derived from the Old English element os "god"
combined with beorn "bear". After the Norman conquest this name was
rarely used."
(http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=osborn)
b) Feel - the power of emotion
c) This guy is like a Merlin figure to me  (Osborne reminds me of
"Owsley", too) with a grasp of pharmaceuticals, a wizardly manner, and
a benign absent-mindedness (shown later)

9) (from an online Companion to the Companion,
http://www.english.mnsu.edu/larsson/gr1.html)
*V5.35-36 a friend who flew the Rio-to-Ascension-to-Ft. Lamy run
That is, from banana-growing Brazil to the British-owned mid-Atlantic
island to the capital of the French African colony of Chad (now
N’Djamena). See Weisenburger’s note at V489.20.
-- none of those places is anywhere near Chelsea...but military people
fly free, don't they?

10) A lot happens in 1,1.  Enjoying all the new outlooks and
interpretations.  If a new Pynchon book comes out, maybe we'll just
pause the group read until we've read the new one... 

11) Found somewhere on the net an account by a lit professor of meeting
up with TRP in a used book store, recognizing him by his purchase of
"Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me" and having a beer with him. 
Supposedly, Pynchon was working on a story about Earth First
eco-saboteurs and living in an airstream trailer...is this to be taken
seriously, I wonder?