ATDTDA (15): A counterfeit mission, 406-413 #1

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Dave Monroe:
          I HAVE at least seen the
          Pauls' unearthing of that likely 
          Kenosha Kid referent acknowledged in
          the outer world, at least, so ...

. . . .there was a essay on AtD in a Guardian UK that picked up 
"tripolar" from one of my rants on the P-List, issued just as the book 
broke, November 26, 2006. There's a couple-two-three lines about
the P-List in a more holistic fashion as well.

          David Gale has been reading my posts!!!!

          "One of the topics discussed was the significance 
          of the cover design. On the bottom left-hand corner 
          of an otherwise rather plain dustjacket is the image 
          of what appears to be a seal or official stamp, 
          depicting what might be mountains, encircled at 
          the seal's circumference by lettering in an 
          unfamiliar script. The subscribers get to work: 
          there's a snow lion in front of the mountains; 
          the mountains resemble giant adenoids; it's 
          not a seal, it's a coin; the coin is a forgery; the 
          script is Tibetan; it's a Tibetan wireless telegraph 
          stamp; the dustjacket is referencing either reincar-
          nation, time travel or tripolar disorder. Remarkably, 
          a subscriber unearths a photo of a 19th-century 
          Tibetan coin that closely resembles the enigmatic 
          original."

http://tinyurl.com/yqqkp4

          The overlay of three different fonts (each suggesting 
          different eras of literary styles and, in a way, different 
          personalities) in the design of the cover of Against the 
          Day, along with the explicitly Tibetian "chop"---Reincar-
          nation? Time Travel? Tripolar Disorder? What ever it 
          is, it's "---not strictly on the map."' and already on our 
          agenda

          One more question---does the "seal" or "chop" wrap 
          around the cover of the finished product, or is it (
          probably deliberately) cut off, the cover of the book 
          being a designed as  a photo of a cover (of another 
          book)?

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0611&msg=109807&keywords=tripolar

          Pynchon's experimental, anti-narrative tendencies 
          appear in his latest novel, Against the Day 
          (1,085 pages) in full-blown, runaway metastasis. 
          All that is glorious and exhilarating about Pynchon 
          is found here, but the problems of scale are taxing. 
          There is a spinal story of sorts: 1890s cowboy and 
          anarchist bomber Webb Traverse is killed by hired 
          guns in the pay of plutocrat Scarsdale Vibe. His four 
          children - Frank, into revolutionary politics and 
          bombing; Reef, a reckless tunnel blaster wandering 
          the Balkans as Europe shudders into war; Lake, 
          who marries her father's assassin, and Kit, a Yale- 
          and Gottingen-educated mathematical prodigy 
          preoccupied with arcane and unsolvable formulae - 
          take up the question of vengeance with varying 
          degrees of dedication. . . . .

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,1956983,00.html

Pretty useful, fairly positive review of the Book.


I agree, Paul Nightingale's well organized, coherent overviews of the narrative
progress in AtD is one of the best things to come out of this reading. They 
will doubtless be of great help in scenes to come as the narrative rips apart 
like the Titanic ramming into a loose iceberg.