AtDTDA : 12 "My Native land is not a country" 326

[mikebailey]

On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>
> This is kind of funny. Where I'm pointing is towards Trieste, a spot on the map
> that takes up a fair amount of space in Against the Day. I've got multi-colored
> post-it tabs throughout my now thoroughly trashed copy of the book---pages
> 159-340 fell out en masse during this third excursion---and the pink tabs are

so the casualties mount: first Glenn's copy, now yours.
The binding seemed fairly sturdy to me, but your reading is more intensive...

> for arrows and spoor that would tie Against the Day to The Crying of Lot 49.

hey, I finally bought a copy of that to reread the other day...

> The longer I read the book, the more tabs go in (I'm using wood glue to get
> the pages back into the so called spine of the novel---[suddenly switches to
> Ben Stein's voice]: "Anybody? Anybody?")

another TV reference that I find opaque...

>
> . . . .there's a tie between purple [spiritual/occult/psycotropics/any
> combination of the three] and green [anarchism/gilded age politics] but pink
> is gaining on the both of them, the spoor of Gengis Cohen seeping into the
> ductwork of this operation, slowing down our daily transmission of "The Slow
> and the Stuppefied" all up and down the ranges. In any case, Trieste is
> critically important in what is to follow---as are bogus stamps and world-wide
> occult conspiracies, garbled or possibly encrypted communications and
> revelations either delayed, deferred or misdirected.
>

OK, so you're linking the Grand Cohen (Crowley/Nookshaft) to Genghis Cohen
(Lot 49 stamp maven) and putting them in the Alternate Communication Channel
category together...
a-and that category is in the same class of categories as
Anarchism/Gilded Age, and Occult/Spiritual/Sacramental Substance
--- so, in a way these might be like the 3 Supernal Sephiroth...
wrt to the Tree of Life animating AtD in your reading

(I'll be watching the consequences that follow from this hypothesis,
testing them &c - because it is an interesting thought)

>             nearly half a century ago, like a chemical process
>             that on repetition grows less efficient and the
>             resulting solution less potent, until it does not work
>             at all.

what kinda process izzat?  distillation gets stronger on repetition...

> just tonnes of 60's stuff in the author's work, and in many ways
> the "60's stuff" is the central theme in Pynchon's scribblings.

hmmm...might be...and Bog knows that 60s stuff is the good stuff...

> or James Joyce] are avatars/icons of the "sixties sensibility" as well.  I just
> don't buy into the notion that postmodern concepts are dominant or ruling
> forces in Pynchon's writing. I think Pynchon's essentialy "60's" sensibility is.
>

what I was wondering is, isn't the spirit of 68 which in many ways
is the coequal and culmination of that 60s stuff, I say, I say,
isn't that entity animated by the same stream of thought as po-mo?

Like, the supernal triad here would be

Binah
60s stuff including the "events" & counterculture
Chokmah
theory from structuralism to postmodernism and beyond
Kether
Pynchon's novels

now me, I read Pynchon primarily for the verbal felicities and
the memorable characters, but nothing wrong with entertaining
an entertaining theory or two...