The first magenta and green? (was

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 13/06/2006:

> Most would agree, I think, that there is a difference between saying 
> that x in Pynchon's novel is a reference to y, and saying that x in 
> Pynchon's novel reminded me of y. Both are valid responses, are more 
> or less relevant in different contexts, and can of course lead back 
> and forth from the one to the other. But they are not the same thing, 
> and trying to elide the difference between the two is just plain 
> wrong, in my opinion.

To illustrate, one of the things which I don't believe has ever been 
successfully resolved is the provenance or significance of that colour 
combination which recurs throughout Pynchon's work from GR on:

"The Heath grows green and magenta in all directions" (GR 749)

"his long Mohawk colored a vibrant acid green, except at the tips, 
where some magenta shade was airbrushed on" (VL 17-8)

"the Philosopher, attempting to maintain his Hair in some order, is 
slowly absorb'd into a mirthful Cloud of tartan-edg'd Emerald Green 
and luminous Coral taffeta" (M&D 271)

In GR I think the first mention is on p. 12: "a bit of lime-green in 
with your rose, as they say". 

Thereafter, those two colors, and shades of those two colors, are 
repeated throughout GR, most often green and magenta (pp. 69, 106, 
749), but also magenta and clover blossom (p. 125), heliotrope and 
sea-green (p. 145), crimson and bottle green (p. 160), green and 
purple, (p. 244), green and violet (p. 447), indigo and Kelly green (p. 
524).

In M&D, see ps 328, 433, 719, 728

There's a lot of discussion in the archives about additive and 
subtractive colour wheels, dyes, light spectra, pigments, colour codes 
and symbols. But still I think it remains one of the abiding mysteries 
of the work -- why the obsession? from where does it derive? etc

OK, so rereading E.M. Forster's _A Passage to India_ last summer, I 
came across this:

"Whatever had happened had happened, and while the intruders picked 
themselves up, the crowds of Hindus began a desultory move back into 
town. The image went back too, and on the following day underwent a 
private death of its own, when some curtains of magenta and green were 
lowered in front of the dynastic shrine." (Ch. 36, last para)

But I didn't know where to take it from there, whether to follow up on 
the Hindu "rhizome" or the Forster "rhizome" (or the curtain "rhizome", 
for that matter). Or just to put it down as a coincidence.

I did (and do) have a strong presentiment, however, that the presence 
of the precise colour combination in Forster's novel is in some way 
significant for Pynchon's subsequent appropriation of it.

best