ATDTDA 728-730 - thoughts

[Glenn Scheper]

Hey -- this is MY section:
This page has some more terms to know:
http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_724-747
Thomas Pynchon Wiki: Against the Daytest

Here we have another, Kit Reefer relationship and
a tete-a-tete parallelling the Foley Scarsdale one
just the page before, and both precipitate an oral
filling response, Foley's knife versus Reef's cigar.

My first thought is P writes by some algorithm:
Let's see, one of these, one of those, a variation
on this one... but then I thought this parallelism
is meant to draw attention. What else is parallel?
The relationships. Both are bound tightly, as in
marriage, the criminals by crime, the brothers by
blood. This tight bond prevents easy resolution
of differences by walking away.

The sidewalk encounter of more people than I can
keep straight, also Dally's attitudes expressed or
not later of love, suggested to me, "resentment".

Maybe it's just the coloring of my life, but love,
and the seeming interminability of marriage seem
to me to shout about resentment, also possession,
and the duality and conflict of a double standard.

I resent that I cannot fix/change/leave you.
I resent that you foreclose all others to me.
I possess/need/choose you.
I have a right to you.
I have a right to someone.
I have a right to everyone.

All the jealousies flaring in this scene arise
from a perception that we are free to choose/have.

Dally memorializes Tancredi's death in a few pages
as foreclosing her having him.

We finish with a third oral filling following a
confrontation: Dally and an Eqyptian cigarette.


Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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