ATDTDA (17): A Question of Space (pp. 460 - 471)

[kelber at mindspring.com]

There's also the subterranean jail/city where Frank is incarcerated in Mexico, and the subterranean adventures of the Chums of Chance in the desert.  Maybe presenting the idea that "reality" is hidden beneath what we think of as the real world where both the real Shambhala (and hefty oil deposits) are located. 

On the other hand, Webb's corpse is deposited on top of an inaccessible structure in Jeshimon.  Does high=hell in this case, or is it some sort of higher spiritual plane?

Laura 

-----Original Message-----
>From: Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at comcast.net>

>Notice, for example, the various ways in which the UP/DOWN dynamic is prevalent throughout the first three paragraphs.  At the chapter's opening Frank is "splashing up" water droplets, he "kept to the river up through New Mexico," "picking up the old Spanish Trail," noticing in Nochecita how "new buildings had gone up" and where the wind was "picking up speed"; the rent was "getting higher each month" and the place was "filled up" with a wide variety of tenants (460). At the same time, Frank feels as if he's "emerging from a stupor he had fallen into," the wind preassure "decreased," the walls of the room threaten to "collapse," and the foundation "had gone on crumbling back to pebbles and dust."  Thus, in a very short passage the references to UP/DOWN spatiality are prevalent.
> 
>Throughout the rest of the chapter these UP/DOWN references continue: Frank could "hear the gunshots and whoop-de-do from up here," but from the toll station "steeped in a cold, neutral green light far below" he could see the city, and with whiskey and cigars he "started down" (462).  The notorious Four Corners Gang is "based up in Cortez," Zoltan falls off the barstool but kicks up the sawdust (463), Moss Gatlin is "headed up" in the direction of Cripple Creek (465), and by chapter's end "something like a cloak of despair was settling down over [Frank's] soul" (471).  These are just some of the UP/DOWN references within the chapter, and we haven't even looked at the IN/OUT dynamic that likewise operates throughout the chapter.
> 
>Are there patterns to Pynchon's use of these references to orientation?
> 
>In George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's _Metaphors We Live By_, the authors discuss our  tendancy to equate orientation and spatiality with particular physical and cultural experiences.  For example, happy is "up" while sad is "down" (e.g., I'm feeling up, my spirits rose; she's really down these days, I fell into a depression).  Similarly, consciousness is "up" and unconsciousness is "down" (e.g., wake up, he rises early in the morning; she dropped off to sleep, he sank into a coma), having control is "up" while being subject to control is "down" (e.g., I am on top of the situation, he's in high command; he fell from power, he is low man on the totem pole), etc. 
> 
>I've never really noticed this aspect of Pynchon's style before, and its prevalence here makes me suspect it is deliberate -- but to what ends?  Consequently, can we look at his use of spatialization to determine if he uses patterns to achieve effect?  While part it in AtD is the result of the folksiness of the dialogue ("Frank found he couldn't sleep, and headed down to the nearest saloon"), I suppose one might look to his early references to yo-yoing in _V._ as the beginning of this motif.  
> 
>Has anyone else noticed this and, if so, what conclusions do you draw?
> 
> 
>Cf. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, _Metaphors We Live By_. U of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1980.
> 
>http://tinyurl.com/2hpjjk