Day the Next. p. 317 ff; the Deep Read, AtD(11) June

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

           Mark Kohut:
           Observe, remark, enlighten me and all of us........on the 
           events and characters, scenes and themes of pages 317 
           to the end of this section of the Deep Read. 

Thanks Mark, seems like a neighborly enough request.

           In Theory they both knew she had to move on. though all 
           he wanted now was to wait, even just another day. But he 
           knew that feeling, and he guessed it would pass.
           317

This might sound off-track, but there's a lot of transitions like this in my 
life right now. I know that it'll be a while before I see my grandaughter Kaia, 
as Amanda and Devon  and Kaia have moved to Olympia Washington. 
There's something about getting older in Merle's response, knowing that 
return is not guaranteed, it might be a long time before they meet again. 

This is a wonderfully concise passage. Merle knows Dally has to move on, 
but all he really wants---deep inside, where he can feel it---is for his darling 
little girl to remain his darling little girl. But he's dealt with being walked 
out on before, he supposes he's gotta be a man about it, after all. Touching 
in a way that Pynchon usually isn't

The passage we've just wandered through concerning alchemy and the gold 
standard [304/306] has my "Spidy Sense" tingling, but seeing as I'm much less 
aware of Alchemy than I should be, I'll have to go over what's already been 
posted. Alchemists would justify their requests for Government Grants [if I may 
borrow a term] by holding forth the promise of making "Gold" out of Goldfish, 
but their real work was elsewhere. Merle's working with the photographic 
potential of rare metals comes back into play near the end of the novel, so I 
figure all the alchemical talk ties into a buried notion of recapturing the 
past. There's so much in Against the Day having to do with with taking the forks 
in the road, and there's an earlier passage in the book where Merle talks about
the way the photographic processes Merle witnesses display life force in silver 
and gold by branching off to different paths.