ATD the norse/nunatak/serpent/odialesque thing

[Dave Monroe]

--- "grladams at teleport.com" <grladams at teleport.com>
wrote:

> what is the City that gets destroyed?

Returned to harbor at last [p. 144]

Not in Iceland but in the city from where the
expedition first sailed.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_119-148#Page_144

"the coming and going of Whitehall gigs" (AtD, Pt. II,
p. 144)

Two-hundred years ago, New York’s rivers were crowded
with every conceivable sailing vessel, from steamboats
to canoes. One ubiquitous craft was a 27-foot-long
boat known as a Whitehall Gig. These boats were the
river’s workhorses, but they were also prime racing
vessels....

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_188/withshoutsofstroke.html

There were 3 of them, and on May 22 they cut smartly
through the waters of NY Harbor to visit the NLCM.
"They" were modern replicas of a four-oared
19th-century craft called a Whitehall gig.

A not-for-profit group called Floating the Apple, was
founded by archeologist Michael Davis in 1993, to
build these 25-foot graceful vessels. His purpose? To
celebrate universal access to NYC's richest asset, its
waterways. The maritime event, called the John Magnus
Row, memorialized the 14-year-old winning coxswain of
a May, 1825 race, considered the start of American
water sports.....

http://www.lighthousemuseum.org/fall99/fall99.htm

Whitehall Gigs

http://www.whitehallgigs.homestead.com/Home.html

upstate security of Matteawan [p. 145]

I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill,
N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the
great city?

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_119-148#Page_145

Some further interesting notes there ...

the man-shaped light shall not deliver you

Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime Neon Genesis
Evangelion (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a
mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears
as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's
control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an
intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris,
who knows?
-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see
the Light find their words dismissed "as the
meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as
witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium.
Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning
from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

those starfish corridors where they suffer ...

“they” are the witnesses who heard the Figure speak.
Pynchon here refers to the radial structure of Jeremy
Bentham’s designs for his panopticon, a
penal/containment facility wherein many individuals
can be observed from a central unit, giving the
illusion of constant surveillance. The witnesses in
“the upstate security of Matteawan” appear to be
detained in just such a facility. Through the use of
the word “starfish” the narrator further invokes H. P.
Lovecraft’s novel At The Mountains of Madness, wherein
starfish- and star-shaped patterns abound in the
culture and physiology of the Elder Ones.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_119-148#Page_145

Saw the Neon Genesis Evangelion feature-length
film/wrap-up (?--more like UNwrap-down, but ... but
there are now FOUR more movies to go, so ...)
recently, followed by a panel discussion.  Much of
interest there, one of those rare moments where I
thought maybe one COULD film Gravity's Rainbow at that ...


 
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