AtDTdA: (9) 248 Wednesday's kick-ass question

[Jasper]

Okay, the question was too general, I agree.  Thanks for your input, and 
your kick-ass contribution!

WRT Venice as a map of itself and a mask of itself, doesn't some of this 
have to do with the perceptions of those visiting?  Does not Venice 
become the expectations of the tourists in order at least to attract 
them in the first place? 

And-or has not history already decided what Venice is, so that it can no 
longer become itself but must play the role designed for it?  Looking 
through these notes on persons, buildings, events, all of the past, 
don't we come to understand Venice mainly through the history of Venice, 
through its myths and iconography, through its ruined frescoes?

And how much of our understanding of AtD is built upon our expectations 
of what a Pynchon novel is or should be?

Tore Rye Andersen wrote:
> Jasper:
>
>> Today's kick-ass essay question:
>> This chapter has a lot about mirrors and opposites, "landmarks" and 
>> "anti-landmarks", the dualities >of Venice itself, etc. [...] Some 
>> instances from this chapter alone: p. 243: Venice "looking like some 
>> map of itself"
>
> You ask good questions, Jasper - too good to answer in any precise 
> manner. Anyway, I've singled out one of the instances of doubling from 
> your list. This phrase: "X looking like/being [something, something] 
> of itself" - is a recurring figure throughout the novel. Here's my own 
> little list (which is probably far from exhaustive):
>
> p. 243: The Chums see Venice from above, "looking like some map of 
> itself"
>
> p. 451: Merle arrives at Candlebrow: "there it was, laid out neat as 
> could be like a map of itself"
>
> p. 574: Dally loathes the tourists in Venice, who are "changing it 
> from a real city to a hollow and now and then outright-failed 
> impersonation of itself"
>
> p. 581: Dally in Venice (again): "Here in this ancient town 
> progressively settling into a mask of itself"
>
> p. 734: Kit looks at Dally's eyes and likens them to: "Photographs of 
> themselves"
>
> p. 891: Yashmeen dreams of flying and hovering "at an altitude that 
> made the Eurasian continent a map of itself"
>
> p. 1046: Merle sees "tomatoes looking like the four-color 
> illustrations of themselves that showed up on lugs down at the market"
>
> Now, the repetition of this phrase must constitute what in GR is 
> called "a bit of redundancy so that the message would not be lost" 
> (GR, 322). But what exactly is the message? The phrases seem to 
> cluster around certain persons (Dally and Merle), certain locations 
> (Venice), and certain perspectives (views from above).
>
> Poststructuralists would probably have a field day with this phrase, 
> rattling off theories of Baudrillardian simulacra, and they probably 
> wouldn't be too far off the mark in this particular instance. Pynchon 
> does seem to use this phrase to describe a reality which is once or 
> twice removed; a reality which somehow seems fake, like a 
> representation of itself. Sometimes this idea is the result of pure 
> altitude (Yashmeen's and the Chums' airborne perspective, Merle's 
> perspective from above), and in the case of Venice, the idea probably 
> harks back to that old theme of V. about tourists who never get 
> beneath the skin of the place (and in catering to this shallow 
> simulacrum of proper travelling, Venice has in effect been reduced to 
> its own skin).
>
> A similar idea is also expressed in those Finnish postcards described 
> on p. 84. The postmarks on these Minneskort aren't real postmarks, but 
> pictures of postmarks, and the Minneskort itself is "a postcard with a 
> picture of what a postcard used to look like before the Russians 
> [...]. A memory of a memory."
>
> And finally (or initially), it is expressed on the very dustjacket of 
> AtD, which - like the Minneskort and like Dally's eyes - resembles a 
> photograph of itself. A copy of a copy. In AtD Pynchon seems hellbent 
> on elaborating this theme of reality once or twice removed - a theme 
> which ties in, of course, with the theme of reality vs. fiction that 
> runs throughout the novel. There is the world, and then there is AtD 
> which in some sense is Pynchon's doubling of the world/his map of the 
> world; and within this fictional doubling there are further fictions 
> and doublings. A-and boy, one could go on and on here - the lack of 
> immediate response to your mirroring/doubling question is probably 
> caused by the fact that there are too damn many possible responses....
>
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