The first magenta and green? (was

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 15/06/2006:

> "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

In fact, it's Dante's colour-coded brushes for the two rival 
politicians (Michael Davitt and Charles Parnell) which inspire 
Stephen's colouring:

"It made him very tired to think that way. It made him feel his head 
very big. He turned over the flyleaf and looked wearily at the green 
round earth in the middle of the maroon clouds. He wondered which was 
right, to be for the green or for the maroon, because Dante had ripped 
the green velvet back off the brush that was for Parnell one day with 
her scissors and had told him that Parnell was a bad man. He wondered 
if they were arguing at home about that. That was called politics." 
(Ch. 1)

I'm not persuaded that the recurrence of the magenta and green 
combination (and variations thereof -- 16 occurrences by my count) in 
Pynchon's novels post-GR has much at all to do with Joyce's allusions 
to in-fighting in the Irish National Land League in the 1880s and the 
revelation of Parnell's involvement with a married woman and his 
subsequent fall from grace in the eyes of strict Irish Catholics.

Magenta isn't maroon or red, by the way. I don't think Pynchon ever 
renders the combination as green & red. Maroon might pop up though.

Green and maroon (and grey) were my old school colours though. Perhaps 
I'll start a Pynchonblog.

best