ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[kelber at mindspring.com]

In the opening C of C in The Windy City sequence, the Chums behave very much as the heroes of a boys' adventure novel.  After leaving (entering the "real" world), Darby becomes rude, Miles starts speaking tongues, there's worry about suicide, etc.  As if the Chicago Worlds Fair marks America's transition from naive enthusiasm about the future, with its amazing gizmos, to a growing dread of the future and the coming war.

I get the feeling that the Chums are stand-ins for "us" -- Americans as a whole. Americans trying to understand the past and comprehend the future.  Observing mostly from a distance, either in space or time, rarely making an actual connection.  Fictional characters observing "reality" being no different than "real people - us" observing real history in a way that ultimately reduces it to fiction.  

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>

>
>
>Mark Kohut:
>
><<Isn't this a kind of statement by TRP that The White City, the whole 
>Columbian Exhibition---America's whole proclamation of its own 
>ideals......was a "dayllit fiction" compared to what life was really like in 
>America then?
>>>
>
>I think so, yes, and a lot of teh book's later episodes come spiralling out 
>of the Chicago Fair. There are also a lot of technology connotations. This 
>links to the Chums in 2 key ways, one being - as alredy pointed out - that 
>we're told the Chicago fair is 'sufficiently fictional' for the Chums to set 
>down at, another being that the Chums are very keen on technologies, their 
>baloon is festooned with cutting edge gadgets, including the 'Tesla device', 
>and they are firm frnends with Prof. Vanderjuice etc. So this links them 
>firmly in with teh question of how new technologies are used - in broad 
>terms, for good or bad, which fits in with teh broader matter of 
>technology's role in shaping history, a key Pynchon theme.
>
>And as you say, the Chicago Fair is regarded by Pynchon as a fiction, and 
>not a very benign one - there are overtones of racism for one thing. So, if 
>the Chums are partially or wholly fictional, and they mesh well with the 
>partially fictional world of teh fair, does that make them a negative 
>fiction too?
>
>This all ties back in with whether teh Chums 'exist' within the 'reality' of 
>the book, and also with whether they are 'good guys' or not.....
>
>Cheers
>JC
>
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