ATDTDA (5.2) - Constance Penhallow

[Carvill John]

Tore:

<< What struck me most in the passage was the
description of Constance as seen from behind, or almost behind: "a
three-quarters view from behind, showing the face only just crescent." We
don't see a face, "only this dorsal finality." This reminded me very much of
some of the descriptions of Katje from GR. As Slothrop first enters her
hotel room, he sees her standing by the window (after having serenaded her):


"the moonlight only whitens her back, and there is still a dark side, her
ventral side, her face, that he can no longer see, a terrible beastlike
change coming over muzzle and lower jaw, black pupils growing to cover the
entire eye space till whites are gone and there's only the red animal
reflection when the light comes to strike _no telling when the light_--"
(GR, 196)
>>

Oh, great stuff. And I love the use of 'ventral' in GR and 'dorsal' in ATD.

What I forgot to say in my Constance post was that due to reading up on 
'contra jour' before ATD came out, I had a particular image in mind, just 
something I found via google, of a 'contra jour' photo being a figure framed 
against the light in a way which, when I read this paragraph, seemed 
strikingly familiar. I could never find that Google 'contra jour' search 
result again, oddly enough, which adds to the mystery. BUt when I first read 
this paragraph, I had this really strong impression that 'this is it, this 
is the Against the Day passage', not least due to that "against the luminous 
iceblink" - againstg the ice-clink, against the light, against the day...

>...the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, who made a series of beautiful 
>paintings around the year 1900 from a perspective very much like the one 
>described by Pynchon

Interesting painings. Thematically, maybe quite similar to Edward Hopper's - 
figures, often female, in interiors, near windows...

<< The amazing thing is that there are so many passages like these, both in 
AtD and in Pynchon's other works; so many, indeed, that we may often pass 
them over in our eagerness to get to the next good passage, and the next... 
 >>

Absolutely, so many which make you stand back in awe and wonder.

Cheers
John

_________________________________________________________________
Exercise your brain! Try Flexicon. 
http://games.msn.com/en/flexicon/default.htm?icid=flexicon_hmemailtaglinemarch07