Per MB, AtD 700-704

[Mark Kohut]

MK wrote: Why Vienna?......what, if any, intentional blindness is going on?

Michael Bailey wrote:
I didn't pluck the quote in relation to specifically Vienna...

MK: I juxtaposed the quote to the question of Why Vienna?...
 
Why?  TRP coudda had Cyprian almost anywhere, certainly
just put him in Trieste, cosmopolitan city, to meet the secret
network, no?
 
Okay, here goes: first, Vienna with Cyprian is a kind of foreshadowing.
Foreshadowing of what?....We will get there by the end but I might say
with full pretension, Pynchon's view of History to come..........
 
First, Cyprian's every move, conversation, etc. is threatened to be known'
about. He, Cyprian, appears to believe that. Slothrop and others in GR
worried about such total control via knowledge by Them. 
Here in Vienna, with the spy network, is the start of what plays out in History.
(Also, spies bring back V thoughts). 
 
Why Vienna? First, it is in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. We do know what TRP thinks of
Austria, Germany, etc. in History. Vienna was a cultural center. (more on Vienna
from "Wittgenstein's Vienna" and George Steiner on, in a virtual moment.)
 
But, HITLER was there then!, among many many others. (Freud)
"From 1905 on, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), citing "unfitness for painting," and was told his abilities lay instead in the field of architecture.[8] His memoirs reflect a fascination with the subject:"
____________________________________________________________

I like lotsa shorter posts rather than too long ones, as is evident to all, so I am sending this, then more on Vienna from various sources to give us deep
background then gonna post more (and another p-lister may have a great post which we have discussed offline).

Consider it all Viennese Waltzing.....
 
 
 

----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 12:40:28 AM
Subject: Re: Per MB, AtD 700-704

On 1/24/08, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Michael Bailey is always writing:
> --
> "...there are not only landmarks, but also anti-landmarks - for every
> beacon, an episode of intentional blindness." (Professor Svegli, p248)
>

In ATD there are passages that you know will
get selected for analysis, and rightly so...
but other places exist where the action/prose/characters
aren't as immediately compelling.

Some on our list see the Colorado sequences that way,
but for me it was the under-sand episode and also
this part that we're on now
that don't shine brightly, at least not right away.  Also,
to some extent, all the Inner Asia stuff.
(Maybe just because I'm not nearly as familiar with the territory...
uncomfortable with BDSM and the 'stans...)
And some say, the whole book!

But we've been finding interesting and important material
in these sections anyway.

I think maybe OBA is saying something a little harder
to catch, a little further beyond my ken, in ATD than
in the previous books, and maybe this anti-beacon idea
is a clue to that?


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