two ships puzzle in AtD

[Lawrence Bryan]

I sometimes feel like we're playing a game of nephelococcygia with  
TRP's clouds. Not to knock it. It is fun.

Lawrence

On Oct 5, 2007, at 6:41 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

More I think on it, the luxury liner/battleship shell game "trick'  
right in the middle of AtD--as someone noticed--might be a major "bi- 
location" theme of  TRPs.........

We are...........History is........a building of some comfort (for  
those who survive).......and a
simultaneous preparation for War.........???

Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
John and All,

Great post......thoughts and obs.....

Led me to this: the bi-location theme in Atd........linked to the two- 
ship midsection of AtD!........as the 'forked tongue', so to speak,  
of History.....

We, in our luxury, our very living, do LIVE......but we further (much  
of) History's human self-destruction...????

I want to link---am I crazy?---the Chums absenting themselves from their
inconvenient interactions with History--to their becoming happy  
bourgeoisie......
and to this section......

MK

John BAILEY <JBAILEY at theage.com.au> wrote:
What a scene.

And yeahp, this is one of the more "Pynchonian" passages of AtD - that
syntaxis as sentences become longer and longer and sweep you up in their
freight-trein wake, so masterfully performed in GR. And then there's the
lists, and the weirdness of a transforming ship (the Silent Frocks
recently seemed a lesser echo of P's characteristic weirdness, too).

In response to Mark K's challenge, I think there are a whole bunch of
overlays to this section. Some of the ways I read the
Stupendica/Maximillian Paradox - by no means a complete or mutually
exclusive list:

1) MK's post-(or whatever-) Marxist reading: making literal the
relationship between military might and capitalist luxury. "*RIGHT* full
rudder!" signals the shift to a military frame. The metamorphosis occurs
at "lethal" expense of passengers. Our attention is drawn to the roaches
who have lived here all along, hitherto unseen, just as Kit has recently
become aware of the underclass of coalmen who have borne him on this
voyage.

2) The mathematical reading: the two-ship problem seems like a lot of
AtD to allow for a reading as a kind of maths allegory. The ship's
premise is 2=1 or 1=2. How could this notion be supportable? What could
it mean?

3) A traditional literary reading: what's the point of this scene? How
does it function near the novel's midpoint, bringing together and then
driving apart one of the book's central couples-to-be?

4)An allusive reading: this passage alone drops the "entropy" bomb on us
- certain to be spotted by P's regular readers. Plus there's it's style,
and the setting of a ship, calling up all of those many, many other
boats Pynchon has created.

5) a mythic-historic reading: Getting into the whole Trieste creation of
the ship, the Austro-Hungarian uniforms, etc, could lead to some
fruitful conjecture on the two ship thing as allegory for the way
history can fork at certain points - fits in with the general ideas on
history that flutter through this novel.

(Actually, on that last point, I'm currently reading Gunter Grass'
Crabwalk, also about the sinking of a boat which had at various times
been a luxury cruise liner, a military ship, a hospital ship, a refugee
vessel &c, and which also does lots of historical meta-stuff, Grass
attempting to approach "real" events of history sideways, sneakily, the
crabwalk of the title.)

Anyway, lots of ways of reading this chapter, is my point, and lots more
than I thought of just then. All valid I think.

All full ahead.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
Behalf Of robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2007 3:07 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: AtDTDA: 18 Anxious voices out of megaphones [518]

One of the author's best set-pieces, a wonderful piece of theater, the
transformation of the Stupendica should be re-read in full:

Anxious voices out of megaphones hitherto unnoticed began calling the
crew to general quarters. Hydraulics engaged, as entire decks began
ponderously to slide, fold and rotate, and passengers found themselves,
often lethally, in the way of this booming and shrieking steel
metamorphosis. Bells, gongs, bos'n's pipes, steam sirens added to the
cacophony. Stewards threw off their white livery to reveal dark blue
Austro-Hungarian naval uniforms, and started shouting orders at the
civilians who moments ago had been ordering them around, and who now
mostly were wandering the passageways disoriented and increasingly
fearful.
"Right full rudder!" the Captain cried, and throughout the gigantic
vessel, as the helm responded and the ship began to heel sharply over,
approaching ever closer to her design maximum of nine degrees, hundreds
of small inconveniences commenced, as bottles of perfume went sliding
off the tops of vanity tables, wineglasses in the dining room tipped
over and soaked the table linen, dance partners who would rather have
kept an appropriate distance lurched into one another, causing foot
injuries and couture damage, assorted objects in the crew's spaces fell
from channel bars serving as shelves next to upper bunks in a shower of
pipes, tobacco-pouches, playing cards, pocket flasks, vulgar souvenirs
of exotic ports of call, descending now and then onto officer's
heads-All full ahead!" as forgotten sandwiches and pastries to which
entropy had been typically unkind made themselves known amid
multilingual expressions of distaste, clouds of dust and soot descended
from overheads throughout the vessel, and the roach population,
newborns, nymphs, and grizzled oldtimers alike, imagining some global
calamity, ran where they might at the highest speeds available to them
given the general uproar.

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