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

[Jasper]

You credit me beyond my contribution.  You were quoting Robin.

Bryan Snyder wrote:
> 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
>