two ships puzzle in AtD

Sat Oct 6 01:21:10 CDT 2007

There's lots of possibilities of various American "Destinies" flowing off in different directions—the rational, nut & bolts scientific [Kit] and the dreamy, mystical, Arty stuff [Dally] begining to veer off from each other. And [of course], in order for there to be Princess Cruises, you gotta have cruise missiles.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> 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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