Atd : page 542---starts on page 524.Big Ass Spoiler

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
> >From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
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> >Somebody, please tell me if I'm wrong.
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> [...]
> 
> >Sir Edmund seems to be a connective link to the explosive
> >potential held within matter as it turns into the state of light
> >itself. He is responsible, along with Einstein, for an introduction
> >to Newton's thoughts on light: "Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflections,
> >Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light", and seems to be a major
> >(unwitting) player in the development of The Bomb. That's what strikes
> >me as the import of:
> >
> >"     And what, furthermore, to make of this late rumor, drifting just
> >below Woeve's ability to aquire the signal at all clearly---an
> >undentifiable noise in the night that sends a sleeper awake with
> >hearts pounding and and entrails hollow---intelligence of a
> >Quaternionic Wepon, a means to unloose upon the world energies
> >hitherto unimangined---hidden, de Decker would say "innocently,"
> >inside the w term."
> >
> >So there's a major connector to GR right there. Along with any
> >number of other worlds I may or may not be projecting. And again,
> >I point to the stamp on the cover of the book and Kit popping into
> >Lord Overlunch's hotel room in Paris on page 1081.
> >
> >I know this might seem weird/obsessive/trainspotting but I'm
> >curious where the exact center of AtD might be located.
> 
> Sure, the Bomb is certainly in AtD as well, but not to such an extent that 
> I'd say that the novel is *about* the Bomb. Hunting for the "exact center" 
> of decentered novels like GR and AtD can often turn out to be something of a 
> wild-goose chase. Of course, one can always find words like "pivotal" in the 
> center of AtD, and one can discover that the only italicized words on page 
> 380 in GR are "right in the middle of it" (true!), but a chase for thematic 
> 'centers' seems doomed, and in fact novels like GR and - perhaps especially 
> - Lot 49 are critiques of this very enterprise. Oedipa is so busy chasing 
> Holy Centers in Lot 49 that she overlooks what is in fact hidden before her 
> very eyes throughout most of the chase: the poor, the rejected, the 
> suffering human refuse living invisibly at the margins of American society 
> (this same theme is also played out in Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man'). The 
> hunt for Grails may often obscure more earthbound realities.
> 
> The challenge for me when reading Pynchon is in fact to resist hunting for 
> Grails. His novels seem so overdetermined with meaning and hint at so many 
> hidden realities that it is very tempting to focus all one's energy to 
> discover and decode these hidden realities. And some energy SHOULD go into 
> this, but not to such an extent that it obscures all the preterite 
> enterprises on the surface of the text. Pynchon's novels are rather like the 
> music Kit hears on page 1080: "The was music, mysteriously audible, tonal 
> yet deliberately broken into by dissonances - demanding, as if each note 
> insisted on being attended to." And for me, at least, if I decide too soon 
> what a novel like AtD is *about*, it becomes harder to attend to each note.
> 
> Now don't get me wrong: I agree with you that AtD contain references to the 
> Bomb, and to Lot 49 as well. The passage with the inverted stamps on pages 
> 978-79 seems to be a particularly clear reference to that novel, with its 
> description of the fight between Ewball and his father as an "Oedipal 
> spectacle." And I really appreciate your many great interpretations and 
> insights of the novel. In the case of the Tristero, though, I feel you've 
> given the organization a centrality in AtD that I can't really find any 
> proper evidence for in the novel itself. It might be slyly hinted at once in 
> a while, but so far I don't see any evidence to support the idea that it is 
> a main, albeit hidden, player in the novel.
> 
> Finally, in an aside, this passage:
> 
> "a means to unloose upon the world energies
> hitherto unimagined---hidden, de Decker would say "innocently,"
> inside the w term"
> 
> - couldn't this also be read as a sly reference to George W. Bush's (W's) 
> destructive term as President?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Tore



It's true that "The W term" could also be referencing shrub,
but someone with a physics/upper math background could tell
us more about the w term, and that's something I really want to know.
A word we all have to remember is "Also".  The w term could also
be a reference to to the worst president in history. The Russian
translation of "Chums of Chance" could also be a stab at Dick Cheney. 
There's a lot of alsos in AtD. It's hard not to interprete pages 149-155 
as referencing 9-11, even though 9-11 is never mentioned. It's hard 
to interprete page 93 as nothing less than a full inditctment of the 
Bush/Cheney administration. The Bush/Cheney administration is not
mentioned anywhere in AtD. And so on. Much of AtD is about reflections
and parallels throughout time, and so on. Someone with a 
physics/upper math background could and should elucidate us,
and I'm looking forward to those interpratations. At 1 & 1/2 readings 
of the book, the potential meanings of any given passage continue to
spiral upwards, and the obscure, albiet meaningful, references 
sprinkled throughout AtD obviously will continue to grow.

Bush is never mentioned in AtD. Cheney is never mentioned in AtD.
"The Bomb" is never mentioned in AtD. All are themes of central
importance to the book. A lot of the central themes of AtD are 
"Under the Rose". 

There is more than one meaning to "central" in a book. One meaning, 
one I was pondering, defines the center of a book in the most prosaic fashion.
Add up the word count, divide by two and see where you land. One way
or the other, halfway through page 542 seems like it's gonna be the
center---in the most prosaic sense---of the novel. I don't know if 
anyone's done a word count yet, but I notice that the passage in
question ends with the word "convene". I'm thinking there's
something to that. 

In "The Crying of Lot 49", Oedipa Maas---College educated 
Young Republican hausfrau---is thrown into the freakish
vortex of an alternate, parallel world---it's like magic, but
inverted. The Trystero (which seems to be partially
her own projection of a world) is seen as "They/Them" 
system in "49". In AtD, whatever source is responsible for 
seeing that messages get through without governmental 
assistance/interference is an "Us/We" system and never 
mentioned. Whenever Oed would say "Trystero/Tristero", 
ears would prick up, eyebrows would be raised and 
conversation would come to a dead halt. While the word
"Trystero" is never used in AtD, messages keep getting  
through via couriers of a different sort . It is an area of study 
that will prove fruitful.

Two other ideas, related to concepts never spoken of in
the novel but very much worth persuing. First, there are 
simply too many arrows pointing in direction of Richard
Feynman for parallels to Kit to be ignored. Second, there
were two, nearly buried, possiable carom shots off of Proust,
and miles of raptureous prose:

"Therefore, if enough time was left in me to complete my work, 
my first concern would be to describe the people in it, even at 
the risk of making them seem colossal and unnatural creatures, 
as occupying a place far larger than the very limited one 
reserved for them in space, a place in fact almost infinitely 
extended, since they are in simultaneous contact, like giants 
immersed in the years, with such distant periods of their lives, 
between which so many days have taken up their place --- in Time."

That's the last sentence of "In Search of Lost Time". I suspect
there will be quite a few places in AtD that will have parallels.
Just because I've been such a junkyard dog about stamps and
unincorporated city/states, don't imagine that all I can see
in AtD is Trystero. What I see mostly is Magick and Anarchy.
The "Trystero" is but a small subset of those two classes. 

What I saw on page 542 was a convergence of themes, 
something Laura also picked up on, pointing out this link:

http://www.elettra.trieste.it/info/index.html

All the best,
Robin

P.S.: I really appreciate the time and thought that goes
into your responses. We are tossing ideas back and forth
and in the process we are casting off sparks. All this,
no doubt, will prove illuminating for all.