M & D and ATD, thematic homage, parallels, etc.

[John BAILEY]

The other morning I got up and for some reason read the last few pages of AtD and was struck by how terribly rich they are - and also how similar to later parts of M&D. In both, we're asked to imagine an alternate future: in M&D, it's the continuation of the guys Westing, and in the case of AtD it's a post-war France where Kit and Dally could resurface and spend endless nights happily (I even picked up the intimation that one or both had died in the war, but I might be projecting there). Difference being, in M&D we return from that imaginary journey, and in AtD we move on to the even more fanciful world of the Chums, with their city-sized dirigibles ever-expanding and, importantly, soon powered by light...

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Tore Rye Andersen
Sent: Tuesday, 24 April 2007 6:54 PM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Cc: markekohut at yahoo.com
Subject: RE: M & D and ATD, thematic homage, parallels, etc. 

Mark Kohut:

>I just posted this on the M & D wiki as I finish M & D.

>  ==Page 504==
>'''You can get above it.... above Distance, above Time itself'''
>a foreshadowing of an overarching thematic plotline of ATD, the Chums 
>of Chance throughline?  >Notice the line about apprehending "all at 
>once the plexity of possible journeys", which seems to >be a clue to 
>some meanings of ATD thru the Chums.

It's a wonderful passage you point to here, and I can't resist the temptation to quote it in its entirety:

"Earthbound," Emerson continued, "we are limited to our Horizon, which is to be measur'd but in inches.-- We are bound withal to Time, and the amounts of it spent getting from one end of a journey to another. Yet aloft, in Map-Space, origins, destinations, any Termini, hardly seem to matter,-- one can apprehend all at once the entire plexity of possible journeys, set as one is above Distance, above Time itself." (M&D, 505)

FWIW, there is a passage in GR with a very similar import, even though the privileged - omniscient, even - perspective in GR's instance isn't an aerial perspective, but a view from the Other Side. Witness Walter Rathenau, in a seance for the elite "from the corporate Nazi crowd":

"You are constrained, over there, to follow it in time, one step after another. But here it's possible to see the whole shape at once" (GR, 165)

At another point in GR we hear of the spirits from the Other Side that "time and space on their side have no meaning, all is together" (GR, 153), and the narrator later informs us that there is:

"no serial time over there: events are all there in the same eternal moment and so certain messages don't always "make sense" back here: they lack historical structure, they sound fanciful, or insane" (GR, 624)

It would seem, then, that GR's Other Side, M&D's Map-Space, and AtD's Chum-Space function somewhat analogously: As privileged perspectives which are in a sense raised above (or beyond) the preterite affairs below - affairs which are ineluctably bound to time and mortality.

The positive side of these views from above is that they allow us to take the long view; to gain a clear historical perspective on what could otherwise seem very confusing. The negative side, however, is that they are in a sense Elect views, once or twice removed from the Preterite humanity below. The Chums, for instance, may have the advantage of a clear perspective from The Inconvenience, but they are often so removed from the events below that the historical events - including WW1 - seem somewhat muted to them. What they gain in clarity of perspective by rising up above, they lose in empathy.

By the way, I can really recommend Kathryn Hume's excellent essay "Views From Above, Views From Below: The Perspectival Subtext in Gravity's Rainbow" 
(American Literrature, vol. 60, Number 4, December 1988, pp. 625-42). In this essay, Hume provides an interesting discussion of aerial vs. eartbound perspectives in GR, but I think that many of her arguments are relevant w/r/t M&D and AtD as well.

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