AtdTDA: [38] Station Break

[Michael Bailey]

robinlandseadel wrote:

>
>  So here's a few questions:
>
>  What's Heaven to You? Parnassus? Shambhala? Paris? Trieste?
>  Seriously, because as far as I can tell, the Rue Du Depart
>  sequence is just as much about heaven as Gravity's Rainbow is
>  about hell.

"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens" - Talking Heads
Heaven is the grace we are flying towards?

>
>  "V." veterans? How much of this scene is a return to the scene of
>  TRP's earlier literary crimes?

Jarry for sure (is there a sidelong reference to Alfred Jarry here?)

The Chums save Vanderjuice from making a terrible attempt at revenge
-----arguably the "son finding and helping the father" that Stencil was
groping after thru V. - expecially when you consider they got to visit
the interior of the earth - created from whole cloth, they embody the
mysterious joyous history that Stencil in his roving and by extension
Pynchon in his
research was seeking

>
>  How do you get to heaven anyway?

realization of
the heavenly in one's current situation?

>  Is Professor Vanderjuice really Professor Farnsworth?
>

Philo Farnsworth?

>  Jesse gets an A+ for his paper on page 1076. Is this fair?

Heck yeah!  If one thinks about it a bit, the list of desiderata is
a spin-free rundown of what most groups expect from their members
and also a recipe for success in most social situations.  If there's
a touch of bitterness, it's because both teacher and student have
- like a bird on a wire - envisioned a kinder, gentler set of customs

>  a-a-a-and what's with all these vectors anyway?

harkens back to Miles's comment about the fireworks, maybe?



-- 
"He ain't crazy, he's a-makin' pottery" - Finley Pater Dunne