Creeping Figs

mikebailey at speakeasy.net mikebailey at speakeasy.net
Sun Sep 17 00:20:01 CDT 2006


Zoyd...drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig

I can think of many words he could modify it with: 
"In sunlight 

- pouring, (and/or) latticing, making chiaroscuro, warming his chest (as Pirate's was warmed in the opening scene of GR), dancing, filtered, softened in its passage, cooled and shaped and shifted before it came through the open window as it shone -  

through a creeping fig"

or (if willing to try too hard, and proceed with the assumption that it is Zoyd drifting awake, soul returning on the silver cord back to the golden bowl, returning from astral travels in dreamland):

"in sunlight

- his consciousness returned to animate his senses, its integral purity remembered from the Ain Soph Aur, (and from his dream of a message) reluctantly, but for the moment painlessly, rendered subject to the multiplicities; returned from the luminous void into these Sephiroth, this day, this body, these cares, this room inside his sprawling house: everything outside, for the moment, existed only as a view truncated, partially blotted, pleasantly abbreviated -

through a creeping fig"

but that posible ambiguity is a more iffy issue than the elision that caught John's eye, an absence wriggling around in the small questioned phrase itself: "in sunlight through a creeping fig" mentions, rather than describes -it no less strongly than if it were more explicit (maybe more strongly through the succinctness) evokes an experience.  

It also has a strong beat

and reminds me of a line from Dylan's "Watching the River Flow" (daylight sneakin' through the window)

all of Vineland seems to me even more lyric that way than his other books...pointers to experience...

and it meets one of our criteria for greatness, as it surely inspires reverie (-: 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carvill John [mailto:johncarvill at hotmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2006 06:25 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Creeping Figs
> 
> Much as I love Vineland, and definitely *not* wishing to stir up the whole 
> political debate around it, I've always found the opening sentence quite 
> odd:
> 
> "Later than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in 
> sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of 
> blue jays..." etc.
> 
> Ok, leaving everything else aside, does that 'in sunlight through' strike 
> anyone else as slightly jarring, as if we'd expect something else between 
> 'sunlight' and 'through'? Some variant on, say, 'in sunlight that', I dunno, 
> 'shone through', 'filtered through'.......?
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Cheers
> JC
> 
> 
> 






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