The first magenta and green? (was

[Ben Yadon]

"There was a picture of the earth on the first page of his geography:
a big ball in the middle of clouds. Fleming had a box of crayons and
one night during free study he had coloured the earth green and the
clouds maroon."

p.15 James Joyce 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'

also repeated in the 'brushes in Dante's press'

-ben

On 6/14/06, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> On 14/06/2006:
>
> > that there ought to be, and, with a good author, certainly is, a less
> > stochastic method of ferreting meaning out than simply blurting
> > associations; that a critical reading can only be the product of a
> > thinking reader....
>
> I think at some point a reader has to take into account the possibility
> that some of the associations he or she has made might not be relevant
> to the text after all. And take responsibility for that.
>
> I think it's the difference between something like the blog which Erik
> posted, where the blogger seems to be writing about his experience of
> reading the novel (the couple of entries I looked at sounded like a
> poor man's version of _If on a winter's night a traveler_) and not the
> novel itself, and another reader who engages with and discusses the
> plot, characters, themes, language etc of said novel. Not knocking
> either, just saying that they're very different ways of responding.
> Obviously for me the latter holds interest where the former doesn't,
> but hitting the delete key isn't such a big deal. "Following a link is
> not compulsory" etc.
>
> I'm not sure where the Forster quote leads us. The sentences are quite
> wonderful in themselves, and Part Three of the novel on which
> essentially they bring down the curtain is extremely funny, as is the
> whole novel. I think that there are broader comparisons to be made
> between Forster and Pynchon, in the way that they both reify through
> their texts cultural and epistemological systems foreign to their own,
> and address specific historical episodes and situations wherein such
> systems come into conflict and clash. I also think that if you assume
> that Pynchon is familiar with Forster, then you also assume that he is
> familiar with the idea of "flat v. round" characters, and with the
> imperative "Only connect". On that basis, I'm less inclined to the
> argument that Pynchon's caricatures, his "cartoon" characters, are
> symptomatic of a stylistic weakness.
>
> Whether or not it's the original source, or holds a key to explaining
> why Pynchon is so obsessed with that colour combination, I don't know.
> But none of the other associations made which I've seen have
> satisfactorily addressed those questions either. Often they haven't
> even attempted to.
>
> "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." (_A Passage to India_, Ch.
> 36, last para)
>
> They're actual curtains, by the way, and inside the wooden shrine it's
> a small silver image of Tukaram, a Hindu saint and "the God to be born"
> who is the father of the dynastic cult in Mau. The "private death"
> alludes to the death of the Rajah which happened prior to the holy
> festival, and which has been kept secret.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tukaram
>
> best
>
>