ATDTDA p 411 & forward, passing thoughts

[Dave Monroe]

On 8/22/07, mikebailey at speakeasy.net <mikebailey at speakeasy.net> wrote:

> "Chick had a momentary vision of a ship's
> passageway somewhere..."
> this keeps reminding me of that John Varley book
> where the people from the eco-nightmare future
> come back to the present and spirit people away
> from planes that are about to crash
> (cool part is, their air is so polluted, the only
> way they can feel at home in the 20th century
> is to chain smoke Camel non-filters & the like)

Which one is that?  I gave up chasing down vaguely remembered SF/film
analogues. Though Samuel Beckett's The Lost Ones (1970) came to mind
as well ...

> then when they meet up with Mr. Ace, the whole
> thing smacks of a cult!  This is about the only
> intimation or fruitful (maybe?) direction
> in the whole section that I don't remember reading
> about in Dave's notes.  Cult, cult, cult!
> Krishnas, Moonies, David Koresh, Charles Manson,
> the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket
> and only Our Leader has the answer -
> "Glossy black eyes, presented like weapons in a duel"
> (the hypno-stare) -- and the curious passivity
> of the cult members "the change that had come over
> his companion the moment they steppe across the doorsill -
> a relaxation young Meatman did not bother to conceal,
> as if, having delivered Chick, he might now
> retreat unmolested into the quiescence of a tool returned
> at task's end to its crib, a state he seemed almost
> to prefer to the troublesome demands of the quotidian" (414)

This hadn't occured to me.  I 'm stuck on Mr. Ace as a "Gray" ...

But no matter what, that is still a helluvan enigmatic chapter, even
by Pynchon's standards ...