AtDTdA (9): 242: Today's kick-ass question

[Bryan Snyder]

Jasper:
>I also can't help but think of how the tracks are 
> signifiers for preterition---as in "from the wrong side of the 
> tracks".

ME: !!!!!!

I look at all the railroad references in AtD, at the time when (in both
America and the "Old World") railways were being expanded at a pace like
never before is exactly what Jasper can't help thinking...

This is the period of time throughout the world when being on "the wrong
side of the tracks" actually begins to mean something.  Obviously, in
Pynchonland, something dark, sinister and evil.  A true division of the
right and wrong side being laid out all over the globe, paid for by the
'haves' and built by the 'have-nots'.

Much like the concentration camp prisoners being forced to help IG produce
Zyklon-B... they are producing, by force (and with the railroads one can
look at what Noam Chomsky says about choice, and I'll paraphrase the man:
if the "choice" is between renting time of your life to someone else in
order to obtain basic necessities of survival, then there is no real
"choice") the very element of their extermination.  Not sure how this would
tie into other TRP works (although one would think that obviously the same
families (or "kind of people") that are slaving for the Scarsdale Vibes of
AtD are going to be the same families (or 'kind of people') ruined by the
Great Depression which is something that clearly affected Ruggles a great
deal), but with AtD, I think TRP is showing the creation of right angles all
over the map... ending to that final 90 degree turn... right to the killing
floor.

I, thanks to a spark of thought started by Jasper, am actually fully
reconciled with this being TRP's design for all those references.

Please share thoughts.  I apologize in advance for the lengthy parenthetical
phrases... 

B

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Jasper
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 6:39 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: AtDTdA (9): 242: Today's kick-ass question

Thank you for a kick-ass kick-ass essay contribution!  BTW, that 
Displaced Person's song from GR shows up on pp. 283-284 in my battered 
old red Penguin edition (in case anyone else wants to look it up for 
context).

robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>              Today's kick-ass essay question:
>              Discuss the significance of the railway lines to 
>              Renfrew/Werfner, AtD, and/or Pynchon.  Pay 
>              special attention to the idea of "flows of power"; 
>              Renfrew says this can be expressed as "massive 
>              troop movements", but note also that railways 
>              help facilitate trade, and strong trading partners 
>              rarely go to war with one another.  (Of course 
>              they often team up and go to war against some 
>              other team....)  Also consider the idea of 
>              rail-worthiness.  Who decides?  Super-scholars 
>              may choose to make connections with Pynchon's 
>              other work (COL49 and M&D come immediately 
>              to mind).
>
> Well, first off let's all thank Jasper for leading off in high style and
with 
> plenty of cross-references. I'm no "super scholar", though Wile E. 
> Coyote's "E-Vile" "Super Genius" seems to come to mind. . . .
>
>
http://looneytunes.warnerbros.com/stars_of_the_show/wile_roadrunner/wile_sto
ry.h
> tml
>
> Plenty more at youtube, can't find the cartoon myself, but it's in there, 
> somewhere, I can smell it from here.
>
> There's three Rail theme'd episodes that come to mind, the first opens 
> Gravity's Rainbow inside a railcar rolling through a bombing, perhaps 
> the transmitted thoughts of one who fell victim to a railway bombing as 
> inscribed on the dreamscape of some unfortunate out at P.I.E.S.C.E.S.:
>
>          A screaming comes across the sky. It has 
>          happened before, but there is nothing to compare 
>          it to now.
>
>          It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's 
>          all theater. There are no lights inside the cars. No 
>          light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron 
>          queen, and glass somewhere far above that would 
>          let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid 
>          of the way the glass will fall---soon---it will be a 
>          spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming 
>          down in total blackout, without one glint of light, 
>          only great invisible crashing. GR 3
>
> And it quite goes on, and makes ever so much more sense in the wake 
> of reading Against the Day. In particular the passage we're reading now.
> Probably some of the same cars were used in AtD, but they're quite a 
> bit more worn and frayed by now, often rolling on the very same lines, 
> through the same towns and countrysides.
>
> The second when Oedipa crosses the tracks at the end of COL 49:
>
>          She walked down a stretch of railroad track 
>          next to the highway. Spurs ran off here and 
>          there into factory property. Pierce may have 
>          owned these factories too. But did it matter now 
>          if he'd owned all of San Narcisco? San Narciso was 
>          a name; an incident among our climatic records of 
>          dreams and what dreams became among our 
>          accumulated daylight, a moment's squall-line or 
>          tornado's touchdown among the higher, more 
>          continental solemnities---storm-systems of group 
>          suffering and need, prevailing winds of affluence. 
>          There was the true continuity, San Narcisco had 
>          no boundries. No one knew yet how to draw them. 
>          She had dedicated herself, weeks ago, to making 
>          sense of what Inverarity had left behind, never 
>          suspecting that the legacy was America. COL49, 147
>
> And that is, in its way, the turning point for the book, the point where 
> Oedipa was broken down by the Tristero. The sequence goes on for 
> four more [exquisite] pages, and is the penultimate scene of the 
> novel. The Train, the Railways, tie lines, all given pride of place, 
> rather outsized and a little bit harrowing in the immensity of its 
> enclosure. with no way for Oedipa to go on, save "as an alien, 
> unfurrowed, assumed full circle into some paranoia." COL 49, 151
>
> The third is located about six pages before we meet up with Geli Tripping
in GR.
>
>          If you see a train this evening
>          Far away against the sky,
>          Lie down in your wooden blanket,
>          Sleep, and let the train go by.
>
>          Trains have called us, every midnight,
>          From a thousand miles away,
>          Trains that pass through empty cities,
>          Trains that have no plave to stay.
>
>          No one drives the locomotive,
>          No one tends the staring light,
>          Trains have never needed riders,
>          Trains belong to bitter night.
>
>          Railway stations stand deserted,
>          Rights-of-way lie clear and cold:
>          What we left them, trains inherit,
>          Trains go on, and we grow old.
>
>          Let them cry like cheated lovers,
>          Let their cries find only wind.
>          Trains are meant for night and ruin.
>          We are meant for song, and sin.
>          GR, 288
>
> That song has echos of "Pan's Labyrinth" for me. Obviously,
> any sort of transformer---shift energy from one level to a higher, 
> perhaps better place, which might happen if you, say, move 
> from one place to another, like changing your address from 
> Turlock to Santa Cruz---would be of interest to Pynchon on the 
> alchemical level. Course, I'm just  a simple country scryer, no 
> point in askin' me questions 'bout that. . . .
>
>             [Tonight's thrilling episode of "The Psychical 
>             Detective" features Dennis Weaver as Psychical
>             Detective Ben Beaver!!!]
>
> Point is, given the general running pattern of this perp, I'd be
> looking for transformative magic [both good and bad] around 
> railroads and given Charles Hollander's take on things I'd be 
> looking at the Robber Barons. I also can't help but think of 
> how the tracks are signifiers for preterition---as in "from the 
> wrong side of the tracks". But it's big enough theme for 
> Pynchon to give it pride of place in two of his most acclaimed 
> works. And his most recent, of course, as well.
>
>