my scrub jays by Ross Macdonald

[Mark Kohut]

In Vineland, the dive-bombing jays show a land out of joint.....like Denmark in Hamlet.

 


----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 1:23:23 PM
Subject: Fw: my scrub jays by Ross Macdonald

"Though Archer defines himself as a Natty Bumpo, "a great tracker" (The Zebra-Striped Hearse), he seems less interested in trapping than understanding his quarry. His constant speculations, sometimes self-contradictory within a single book, on coincidence, fate, and the causes of crime reveal the depth of his intelligence, whatever its source in experience or book learning. His frequent awakening by early morning birds attests to harmony with the natural cycle that almost balances the horrors he witnesses." (Burton Kendle in 'Lew Archer as Culture Maven,' in The Big Book of Noir, ed. by Ed Gorman et al, 1998)

 


----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 8:27:52 AM
Subject: my scrub jays



Sorry to dwell on the first sentence of VL, but I just got hold
of Ross Macdonald's The Underground Man, and things seem to be
getting intertextual. The novel begins as follows:

"A rattle of leaves woke me some time before dawn. A hot wind was
breathing in at the bedroom window. I got up and closed the window.
And lay in bed listening to the wind.
  After a while it died down, and I got up and opened the window
again. Cool air, smelling of fresh ocean and slightly used West Los
Angeles, poured into the apartment. I went back to bed and slept
until I was wakened in the morning by my scrub jays.
  I called them mine. There were five or six of them taking turns
at dive-bombing the window sill, then retreating to the magnolia
tree next door.
  I went into the kitchen and opened a can of peanuts and threw a
handful out of the window. The jays swooped down into the yard of
the apartment building. I put on some clothes and went down the
outside stairs with the rest of the can of peanuts." (TUM, p. 5,
Fontana/Collins pbk, 1971)

Lew Archer, more of an early bird in his opening morning than Zoyd
is in his, seems to get along with his jays. Jay-feeding will even
connect him to a central character. Whereas in a Pynchon novel,
the motif of initial aerial threat tends to be more Gothic...


Heikki