AtDTDA: 19 On the beach [525]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I'm providing links to the invaluable Against the Day blog at the 
Pynchonwiki. There's lots of useful definitions and history. I'll also 
refer to the Chumps of Choice blog, which offers a number of 
interesting alternative points of view.

http://tinyurl.com/2wdb25

http://tinyurl.com/26jnxf

Kit finally lands on European soil—anyone else remember Kit's 
original intended destination? That's right, Marseilles [511], we'll 
get back to that in about, say. . . .20 pages, but that's another 
story, of course [after getting 'flashbacks' for a while, you
start to realize that some of them are flashforwards]. Meanwhile 
back on dry land, Kit is, shall we say, a tad disoriented? He 
"wobbles into the 'Continental' "[1], still in some mental landscape 
where he's landed on dry land with the Vibes holding a 
reservation for him at the best hotel in town. Then he looks in the 
mirror and 'reality' kicks in:

          Almost taking it personally, he was about to invoke the 
          Vibe name when he caught a glimpse of himself in one of 
          the gold-framed mirrors when sanity intervened. Judas 
          priest. He looked like debris washed up on the beach.

The phrase 'On the Beach' also appears at the end of the final 
sentence at the bottom of this page. The use [and re-use] of
this signifyer of nuclear apocalypse surely is not by accident.
The use of the mirror here reminds me of a scene from 'The
Crying of Lot 49':

          She made the mistake of looking at herself in the 
          full-length mirror, saw a beach ball with feet, and laughed 
          so violently she fell over, taking a can of hair spray on the 
          sink with her. . . . [24, Perennial Classics edition][2]

"Outside again" Kit wanders back to the Quai, finds a little 
drinking establishment, orders a beer and assesses his situation.
While adding up his change and figuring out how to get to 
Gottingen he's distracted by a violent dispute from another group 
of exiles [for surely Kit realizes he's now an exile, another member 
of the 'disinherited'], a convocation of Quaterninians [?] who, 
somehow, Know a fellow math nerd:

          . . . .Even stranger than that, he now grew aware that 
          they seemed to recognize him—not that Masonic signs 
          and countersigns were being exchanged, and yet—

. . . .and yet on 542:

          . . . .What better place for the keepers of the seals and 
          codes to convene?

. . . .what better place?

1. A quick Google search did not unearth a 'Continental' hotel in
Ostend, then again this is the world with a minor adjustment or two, 
after all.

2. Immediately followed by a demonstration of jet propulsion and a 
gas attack, with all sorts of war foley in the background, what with 
'Cashiered' continuing on the tube:

     The can hit the floor, something broke, and with a great outsurge 
     of pressure the stuff commenced atomizing, propelling the can 
     swiftly about the bathroom. Metzger rushed in to find Oedipa 
     rolling around, trying to get back on her feet, amid a great sticky 
     miasma of fragrant lacquer. "Oh, for Pete's sake," he said in his 
     Baby Igor voice. The can, hissing malignantly, bounced off the 
     toilet and whizzed by Metzger's right ear, missing by maybe a 
     quarter of an inch. Metzger hit the deck and cowered with Oedipa 
     as the can continued its high-speed caroming; from the other room 
     came a slow, deep crescendo of naval bombardment, machine-gun, 
     howitzer and small-arms fire, screams and chopped-off prayers of 
     dying infantry. She looked up past his eyelids, into the staring 
     ceiling light, her field of vision cut across by wild, flashing overflights 
     of the can, whose pressure seemed inexhaustible. She was scared 
     but nowhere near sober. The can knew where it was going, she 
     sensed, or something fast enough, God or a digital machine, 
     might have computed in advance the complex web of its travel; 
     but she wasn't fast enough, and knew only that it might hit them 
     at any moment, at whatever clip it was doing, a hundred miles an 
     hour. "Metzger," she moaned, and sank her teeth into his upper 
     arm, through the sharkskin. Everything smelled like hair spray. 
     The can collided with a mirror and bounced away, leaving a silvery, 
     reticulated bloom of glass to hang a second before it all fell jingling 
     into the sink; zoomed over to the enclosed shower, where it crashed 
     into and totally destroyed a panel of frosted glass; thence around 
     the three tile walls, up to the ceiling, past the light, over the two 
     prostrate bodies, amid its own whoosh and the buzzing, distorted 
     uproar from the TV set. She could imagine no end to it; yet 
     presently the can did give up in mid-flight and fall to the floor, 
     about a foot from Oedipa's nose. She lay watching it. [24/25, op cit.]