pynchon-l-digest V2 #5376

[Dan Hansong]

Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2007 15:05:07 +0000
From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Subject: Re: ATD p356 Chinese Gong Effect
      
I would hazard that the "Chinese Gong Effect"---the Chinese Gong would be 
the Tam-Tam---would be to drown everything out with pure volume, as a 
Tam-Tam can drown out a Symphony Orchestra performing at full tilt. This 
I know from experience. Of course, there's also "Kicking the Gong Around", 
a reference to smoking Opium from "back in the day" .
 
            Robin, your interpretation is also a good alternative. But Luca Zombini
            is a magician rather than a conductor in a orchestra. Before Dally's
            long-awaited visit to her mother's husband's home, "she started working
            as Bria's knife-throwing dummy" (p.353). Kinfe-throwing is a stunt 
            tinted with Oriental color. The dummy is merely asked to stand before
            an upright board and keeps on smiling, when knives are slung from the
            performer and miraculously penetrate the mummy's contour area on the
            board. Since Bria can do this even in her sleeping, Dally's role is near to
            neglectable. Therefore, I doubt whether you can compare a dummy's
            part in knife-throwing with the Tam-Tam, which drowns everything out
            with pure volume. It's perhpas more sensible to base this analogy on
            the chemical property rather than the accoustic one in the case of Chinese
            Gong. 
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