ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[Carvill John]

Laura:

<<  One more interesting point that I noticed.  Hunter's wandering through 
the unfamiliar part of town, with a grid that no longer makes
sense, echoes Lew Basnight's wanderings through Chicago.  The advent of the 
20th century and its wars comingling with the advent of
the 21st century and its wars. >>

Yes, and the way the streets narrow and change gradually into corridors, 
which leads Hunter into a room where people are having a discussion about 
how to escape, and they invite him to join them, all has a very dream-like 
quality, and once again reminds me of GR. And it's followed by a very 
GR-remeniscent paragraph or tow, which I'll get to eventually....

<< I think Pynchon also alludes to another "cause" of 9/11: the building of 
the World Trade Center towers as an affront to the
character of the city as it had been.  Their building was quite 
controversial:  the NYC skyline was a world-renowned view, delicate, 
filagreed, spires, rising up to a point, then gracefully subsiding.  In the 
midst of this, "they" plunked two giant metal filing cabinets.  A move away 
from art towards vulgar commerce (specifically the takeover of the city by 
the rapacious real estate
industry). >>

It has somehow become impossible to criticise those towers themselves, 
because of what happened to the people in them. Claiming that the WTC towers 
should never have been built is somehow construed as tantamount to 
clebrating their destruction. I remember thinking the Rough Guide to New 
York captured the anti-aesthetic of the towers well by calling them 'twin 
Ronson lighters'. But criticising them now is taboo, you'd get outraged 
looks in public if you did that - as if you'd run up behind Mother Teresa 
and 'goosed' her!

Cheers
JC

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