AtDTDA: [38] p. 1073: Seduced into the Futurist Nosedive

Mark Kohut markekohut at yahoo.com
Mon Aug 11 07:26:45 CDT 2008


Yea, the "futurist nosedive" over one of the most pleasant of public spaces---a restaurant---in that awful light is reminiscent of the V-2
coming down.....foreshadowing.....................


--- On Mon, 8/11/08, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: AtDTDA: [38] p. 1073:  Seduced into the Futurist Nosedive
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Monday, August 11, 2008, 8:08 AM
> There is family discussion, continuing Dally and
> Yashmeen's coy little dance:
> 
>           "But you're the one he fought a duel
> over." 
>           "Almost fought a duel. What did he tell you
> anyway?"
>           "I may have exaggerated," Kit said. . .
> .
> 
> All haul into 'Ristorante del Cambio—you remember,
> the spot Kit 
> first attempted a nosedive, right over Dally and Clive?
> Seems 
> like he feels bad about that, wants to make up. Or maybe
> he's 
> just gloating. The Cambio is known locally as "the old
> lady." '
> 
> There's no veal—wartime shortages, but the meal
> described:
> 
>           Agnolotti (pronounced anneeolottee) are
> Piemontese stuffed 
>           pasta, and come in a great many different
> varieties, some filled 
>           with cheese, others meat, and others still
> meatless. They are, 
>           in any case square and small, about 3/4 of an
> inch to an inch 
>           on a side, and are made using very thin sheets of
> pasta. They 
>           also are often made from cooked meat, in other
> words, leftovers. 
>           Recycling can result in something both elegant
> and very tasty.
> 
> http://italianfood.about.com/od/stuffedpasta/r/blr0748.htm
> 
>           . . . .and risotto, and mushroom stew, and
> tagliarini, 
>           and it was truffle season. . . .
> 
> . . . .and if you're a vegetarian [like me] you realize
> that you could make 
> a feast out of the described meal and go vegetarian and use
> up the 
> leftovers and be green as all get-out. And eventually this
> thread gets
> warped into a silly, silly tango. Sigh. . . .
> 
> But please to remember that Pynchon's comedy is
> frequently bi-located,
> with deliberate anachronisms galore.
> 
> Oh and by the way, according to "Winegeeks"
> Nebbiolo is
> 
>           Possibly the greatest of Italian grapes and
> certainly the 
>           longest-lived. 
> 
>           Although attempts have been made to grow Nebbiolo
> in 
>           California success has been fleeting at best.
> 
> A cozy scene of kindred spirits sharing a meal, but what
> has 
> happened to the lighting?
> 
>           The city was full of acid-yellow light and black
> and precise 
>           shadows back inside the arcades. Searchlights
> stroked 
>           the sky. 
> 
> Futurism as Hell—our modern hell. The visuals are
> straight out 
> of Tullio Crali paintings. 
> 
> http://www.simultaneita.net/tulliocrali.html
> 
> . . . .the futurist nosedive. . . .
> 
>           . . . .with its aesthetics of blood and
> explosion. . . .
> 
> . . . . the aesthetics of "Dark Knight" and Iraq.
> The meanings in 
> this section are not ambigious, like wands tightly bundled
> into 
> a giant SUPERSTAFF! ! ! Futurism is a very specific vision,
> one
> that applies quite well to such movies as Dark Knight and
> Iron Man, seducing the masses with the aesthetics of
> fascism,
> the glory of blood and explosions.
> 
>           ONE DAY CLIMBING down out of Renzo's Caproni
> who 
>           should reappear from the olden days but Kit's
> old Yale 
>           classmate Colfax Vibe. . . .
> 
> Somehow I'm getting a flash of George Herbert Walker
> Bush in
> flack jacket and helmet. No matter who, it's still
> corporations from 
> the U.S.A. strengthening fascism throughout the world with
> cold, 
> hard, American cash. And like TRP mentions in Gravity's
> Rainbow, 
> technology develops a life of its own, creates an agenda of
> its own, 
> sometimes takes over its host, like a possession or a
> spell.
> 
> Ah, but I'm getting away from myself.


      




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