ATD the norse/nunatak/serpent/odialesque thing

[bekah]

At 11:54 AM -0700 3/31/07, Dave Monroe wrote:
>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



Not really - but Pier 3 of Hoboken,  New Jersey is across the Hudson 
and  in 1900 an historical inferno started there  in the hold of a 
ship.
<http://www.maggieblanck.com/JPetermann/Fire.html> &
<http://www.maggieblanck.com/Hoboken/PhotosFire.html>
<http://www.pier3.org/pier3/index.html>
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299990/business>

graphics
<http://www.pier3.org/pier3/visuals.html>
(watch the flash movie to the ending comment)

But there are clues that Pynchon is directing our attention all the 
way from the ancient times to 9/11.  I think it reverberates through 
and across time like the ancient,  unnameable,  ice-bound, 
snake-faced odalisque which brought it on  ("...everyone in town 
seemed to know what the creature was..." - pg 151).

But there are allusions to a "City,"  from page 154,

"Attention was directed Downtown, kept wrapped in a plasma of 
protective ignorance, extending at last to the enormous rampart of 
silence along its edge, one limit of the known world, beyond which 
lay a realm the rest of the city could not speak of, as if having 
surrendered, as part of some Plutonian bargain, even the language to 
do so.  It being the grand era of arch building in the City, usually 
of triumphal sort, it was decided to put up, at some transition point 
into the forbidden realm, another great Portal, inscribed I AM THE 
WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY - DANTE, above which, on the anniversary of 
that awful event, spanning the sky over the harbor, would appear a 
night panorama - not quite a commemorative enactment - more an 
abstract array of moving multicolored lights against blue, somehow 
maritime, darkness, into which the viewer might read as he chose."


Kit and his company of the moment go under that sign in the Hudson 
River on page 401 and see some real damage.   I still think that the 
city is Hoboken - 1900 but that Pynchon uses that to great effect on 
the now of our lives.

Bekah
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20070331/ad7e9a40/attachment.html>