ATD: destruction reminiscent of 9-11, maybe global warming, etc. WAS RE: AtD - Anarchy vs Terror

[pynchonoid]

--- kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> p. 138-155 SPOILER
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That's worth considering, thanks. This section mixes
up a lot of influences in a dreamy-nightmarish way
that is going to be fun to untangle with close
reading.  I've posted elsewhere (here, at
http://pynchonwiki.com) the way that Penhallow's
getaway seems to reverse the terminal claustrophobia
of GR's opening  sequence where nobody gets out alive.

Isn't North the direction of death in Pynchon? Seems I
recall something like that from GR, it's  in M&D, too,
something like that.   

Like white being death in Pynchon, he makes that
explicit, over-determined in fact.

> 
> Did anyone else take the Creature laying waste to
> the City sequence as, in part, a reference to global
> warming?  It's an obvious description of 9/11, with
> shades of King Kong, but the fact that the danger
> comes from the arctic seems a nod in this direction.
> 
> Laura
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: John BAILEY <JBAILEY at theage.com.au>
> >Sent: Nov 30, 2006 9:39 PM
> >To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> >Subject: RE: AtD - Anarchy vs Terror
> >
> >Me too, partly - and perhaps, at a stretch, the
> reader's skepticism ("of
> >course there was never *really* a hole in the
> antarctic pole!") a
> >literary refraction of contemporary denial about
> climate change, most
> >obviously the ozone hole of which people living
> around my neck of the
> >woods are all too immediately aware. 
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org
> [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> >Behalf Of kelber at mindspring.com
> >Sent: Friday, 1 December 2006 1:28 PM
> >To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> >Subject: RE: AtD - Anarchy vs Terror
> >
> >SPOILER, p.114-118
> >
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> >I took this description to be sort of a negative
> (photographically
> >speaking) image of what's actually happening in the
> modern world: the
> >shrinking of the polar icecaps due to global
> warming.
> >
> >Laura
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >>From: John BAILEY <JBAILEY at theage.com.au>
> >
> >More interesting to me was the way
> >>P describes the polar entry points to the Telluric
> interior as freezing
> >
> >>over, sealing up, and the interior itself as being
> a far darker, more 
> >>dismal place than it was in M&D. It's easy to
> infer that soon enough 
> >>those icecaps will be solid, and the interior will
> be inaccessible.
> >>
> >>It does a nice job of extending that M&D theme of
> modernity 
> >>rationalising away the possibility of magic, of
> wonder, of the 
> >>impossible. Which of course is something that runs
> through every one of
> >
> >>P's novels.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> 
> 



 
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