AtdTDA: [38] p. 1069/70 An Adult Exchange of Views

[Mark Kohut]

Kit Traverse................another Traverse son whose sins of the Father
infect and damage his life---personally and morally.  




--- On Fri, 8/8/08, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: AtdTDA: [38] p. 1069/70 An Adult Exchange of Views
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Friday, August 8, 2008, 11:48 AM
> From the Pynchon wiki:
> 
>           Italo-Turkish War
>           Over control of Libya, 1911-12, important
> precursor of 
>           the Balkan Wars. An Italian flyer dropped
> history's first 
>           aerial bomb on Turkish troops. See Italo-Turkish
> War.
> 
> Kit's kicking the tires on a small squadriglia of
> Bleriot monoplanes,
> shot-up aeronautic veterans of the Italo-Turkish War, and
> getting to be friendly with the ground-crew in Torino,
> thinking 
> he could somehow draw Dally away from Clive, perhaps a 
> flight would pull her back. Kit knows full well that
> he's 
> being two-timed. It's not like we weren't warned,
> back on 1066 
> Dally's whistling "J'ai Deux Amants".
> Dally's having her dalliance—
> a "dinner engagement"—with Clive Crouchmas at
> the Cambio. . . .
> 
>           PW: the Cambio
>           "The Ristorante del Cambio, known locally as
> 'the old lady'" 
>           (ATD, p. 1073), is a famous restaurant in Turin,
> in operation 
>           since 1757, where important politicians and
> generals have 
>           dined. It is located at 2, Piazza Carignano,
> Turin. 
>           (See also pages 1070 and 1073.)
> 
> . . . .there's a lovely dinner party at the Cambio on
> 1073.
> 
> Meanwhile, back on page 1069, at a bar on the Po:
> 
>           PW: I Murazzi
>           The name given to a stretch of riverfront arcades
> on the west 
>           bank of the Po in central Turin. They were
> originally boat-houses 
>           and landing places, but eventually developed into
> discos and 
>           bars and so became a center of Turin's
> nightlife. The name 
>           comes from the stone embankment
> ("walls") that were built 
>           along the Po in the nineteenth century to prevent
> flooding of the 
>           city center.
> 
> Drinking buddy Renzo turns Kit on the the notion of being
> the 
> engineer for an early and all-too-effective form of
> "Death From 
> Above", a theme explored elsewhere, Vineland and
> Gravity's 
> Rainbow in particular. Renzo speaks of "Una
> picchiata", the 
> Italian for "a nosedive." Kit is getting seduced
> into creating one 
> of the first dive-bombers; an early and rather pure
> expression
> of the future as hell itself.