AtDTDA: 18 Seeing Red [510/511], state the obvious [ditto]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Mark Kohut:
          Why red?, ya think?

          robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
          . . . .Kit found himself once again gazing across the saloon 
          at a young woman with a striking head of red hair. . . .

Reasonable question, I'm still looking for the answer. However [and I'm 
sure it's covered in fine detail on the p-list] TRP is constantly using 
color as signifyer, embedding information, a code. The potassium 
permanganate in GR, "Purpurstoff" for cocaine's purple "anti-target, 
signifies degrees of purity in a simple, quick test:

          Somehow Säure has got Slothrop to talking about the Rocket. 
          Not at all Säure’s specialty, of course, though he’s been keeping 
          an ear tuned. If it’s wanted, then it has a price.

          “I could never see the fascination. We kept hearing so much about 
          it on the radio. It was our Captain Midnight Show. But we grew 
          disillusioned. Wanting to believe, but nothing we saw giving us that 
          much faith toward the end. All I know is it brought disaster down on 
          the cocaine market, Kerl.”

          “How’s that?”

          “Something in that rocket needed potassium permanganate, right?”
          “Turbopump.”
          “Well, without that Purpurstoff you can’t deal cocaine honestly. 
          Forget honesty, there just wasn’t any reality. Last winter, you 
          couldn’t find a cc of permanganate in the whole fucking Reich, Kerl. 
          Oh you should’ve seen the burning that was going on. Friends, 
          understand. But what friend hasn’t wanted to — in terms you can 
          recognize — push a pie in your face? eh?”
          “Thank you.” Wait a minute. Is he talking about us?
          “So”, having continued, “there crept over Berlin a gigantic Laurel and 
          Hardy film, silent, silent - . - because of the permanganate shortage. 
          I don’t know what other economies may have been affected by the A4. 
          This was not just pie-throwing, not just anarchy on a market, this was 
          chemical irresponsibility! Clay, talcum, cement, even, it got these 
          pervert, flour! Powdered milk, diverted from the stomachs of little 
          sucklings! Look-alikes that were worth even more than cocaine—but 
          the idea was that someone should get a sudden noseful of milk, 
          hahahahah”, breaking up here for a minute, “and that was worth the 
          loss! Without the permanganate there was no way to tell anything for 
          sure. A little novocain to numb the tongue, something bitter for the 
          taste, and you could be making enormous profits off of sodium 
          bicarbonate. Permanganate is the touchstone. Under a microscope, 
          you drop some on the substance in question, which dissolves—then 
          you watch how it comes out of solution, how it recrystallizes: the 
          cocaine will appear first, at the edges, then the vegetable cut, the 
          procaine, the lactose at other well-known positions - a purple target, 
          with the outer ring worth the most, and the bull’s-eye worth nothing. 
          An anti-target.”
          GR: V. 375, B 436, P 381
          

http://rankzero.de/?cat=39

. . . .so I don't know why Red should be a signifier, but it is. . . .


          MK:
          Re: Stupendica and luxury liner,
          TRPs way of saying the comfortable bourgeois 'luxury' class 
          are ineluctably linked with war.....?  

The guy manages to find lots and lots of ways, the business concerning 
First Class [tuned to A=440]  vs, Fourth Class accommodations [tuned by 
(presumably) imperfect ear] on 510/511 reminds me of James Cameron's 
"Titanic" and I'd be shocked—shocked, I say!—that Our Beloved 
Author would stoop so low as to be consciously pilfering from that vast 
and bloated epic. particularly considering how much of J. K. Rowling's stuff 
he fools around with in AtD, not to mention potential inspriation from some 
seriously cool use of decor and Kate Winslet's (or her body double's) back
in the visual design of Titanic.