Kick-Ass Thank You

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

For the longest time I'd be hovering over the computer, spending inordinate 
amounts of energy cooking up responses. When the torch was hurled in my general 
direction, I jumped in. When I was finished with my little tour of duty, I eased 
up for a variety of reasons. I'd say that Tore's response to the Deuce/Lake 
question was very on:

      The first thing I thought of when reading that moniker (introduced by Webb 
      on p. 190) were a couple of significant scenes in Vineland. The first 
      scene occurs in a suite at the Imperial in Tokyo, just after Ralph Wayvone 
      has bought DL at an auction (VL, 137-38), and the second episode takes 
      place in another hotel room, between two different people, namely Brock 
      and Frenesi (VL, 212-15). The scenes are in effect mirror images of each 
      other (just as DL and Frenesi are doubles -- The theme of 
      mirrors/doubles/twins is almost as important in VL as in AtD): In both 
      scenes a woman sells her services (and in effect herself) to a male figure 
      of power, and in both scenes, a storm is raging outside the window, and 
      Pynchon describes these storms in lavish and scary detail 
      (see VL, 138, 212, 215):

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0705&msg=118884&sort=date

If I had the time, I'd jump in head-first and look for all the mirrored 
correspondence of all of Pynchon's books to AtD and maybe some 
day that might happen. But reality kicks in after a while. This is a 
dense cryptic book, character motivation sometimes derives from 
non-human motivators. After a certain amount of time, holding 
one's thoughts on just one book for so long will shake out the 
participants down to just a few folks who are really involved, what 
you might call "the regulars". And so it goes.The questions were 
not inane, nothing in Pynchon is ever truly obvious, and as much
time and energy I've spent so far on Against the Day, I feel like 
I'll never really get to the bottom of it. 
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Jasper <jasper.fidget at gmail.com>
> Well I gave it a shot.  I wanted to get more people participating, thus 
> all the (possibly inane) questions.  Mostly it was just the regulars 
> though, and we should all thank them for keeping this going.  I don't 
> blame anyone for lurking (or just ignoring); I expect to go back to 
> doing that myself.
> 
> I am curious why there were only a couple of comments on the last two 
> questions about character motivations and psychology (Why Lake + Deuce, 
> and why Lake thinks she's "bad").  I figured those would do a lot better 
> than the more abstract questions about mirroring and dreams and "Them".  
> And I'm probably a sucker to expect more than a couple-three replies to 
> a poll, but anyway, what was the problem:
> 
> a) The text is too cryptic to understand character motivations
> b) The text is too brief to really discuss anything about the characters
> c) Pynchon's characters aren't traditional characters so we shouldn't 
> treat them that way
> d) It's a big complex book and I haven't gotten a handle on it yet
> e) The answers were obvious and the questions pointless
> f) The list is not a safe enough environment for offering readings that 
> others may consider wrong or silly or unsupportable
> g) Other -- fill in the space provided:
> 
> Anyway, whatever the reason, let me just toss this sputtering torch in 
> Keith's direction: it's all you now, tiger!  As Dylan said to Columbus, 
> "Good luck."
> 
> 
> 
> robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
> > I feel a need right now to thank Jasper for the Kick-Ass job he did of 
taking 
> > over the helm for this passage of AtD. Loved the questions, how they 
> > invited and generated discussions.
> > Too cool!