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

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Sorry, a little late to this discussion due to being on vacation in New Mexico (where I saw the Sangre de Cristo mountains!).

Nosedive over a restaurant?  How about the Windows On the World restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center on that fateful day?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Aug 11, 2008 8:26 AM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: AtDTDA: [38] p. 1073:  Seduced into the Futurist Nosedive
>
>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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