ATDTDA skipping around, tenuous connections, febrile speculation...

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

First off, a "Hup!' or a "Hep" or maybe even a "Hear! Hear!" for Michael for 
picking up the ball, washing it off a little and tossing it back to us all out 
here in the virtual privacy of out homes.

My wheels are turning slower in this section, what with me reading all 
sorts of bools at the same time, more like research than reading for
pleasure. There's a an interesting scatter of books in the office,
laid out like a messy, unintentional celtic cross. Scrying the general 
throw of books right now might be a special sort of "Mancy", kinda like
metabibliomancy or bibliomancy + an additional observational angle.

To my extreme left is a copy of "The Key of Solomon the King" [cryptically 
covering a copy of Northrop Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism" that some Dude told me 
to read]  holding open a copy of Mason & Dixon on the start of chapter 13. The 
page contains the phrase "Against the Day". The context is "In opposition to the 
growing light", a force to---if not obliterate, at least to moderate the glare 
of the sun. So it is a resistance to the day, to too much light.

          Moving now toward the kind of light where at last 
          the apple is apple colored. . . . [GR, P774/V759/B886]

Speaking of moderating the glare of the sun:

    " 'Demagogue'!" mutters Dr. Franklin. "our excellent 
     Sprout Penn, the latest of his crypto-Jesuit ruling family, 
     and his Satanick arrangement with Mr. Allen, his shameless 
     Attentions to the Presbyterian Mobility---has the effrontery 
     to speak of 'crushing this Demagogue'---well, well, aye 
     Demagogue . . . Milton thought it a 'Goblin word,' that might 
     yet describe good Patriots,--- "

        "Good Patriots all!" cries the impulsive Mr. Dixon, raising 
     his Cup.

        Dr. Franklin observes them, one at a time, through the tinted 
     lenses of Spectacles of his own Invention, for moderating the 
     Glare of the Sun, whose Elevation upon his Nose varies, 
     according to the message it happens to ne inflecting, giving over 
     all the impression of a Visitor from very far away indeed.
     M & D, 266.

On the desk, to my left, is a copy of Proust's "Finding Time Again" on top of a 
copy of Gravity's Rainbow. Of all the books in "In Search of Lost Time"---as 
Alison Bechtel points out in "Fun Home", wasted or destroyed time, 
thus "Mindless Pleasures"---the S & M scenes in "Finding Time Again" most 
resemble scenes of depravity in Gravity's Rainbow, set, setting and tools. 
In Against the Day, there are many times the language resembles Proust:

        In New York at last she stood out of the traffic, 
     watching shadows of birds move across sunlit 
     walls. Just around the corner, on the great 
     Avenue, two-horse carriages curvaceous and 
     sumptuary as the beds of courtesans in a romance 
     moved along, the horses stepping carefully in 
     mirror-symmetry. The sidewalks were crowded 
     with men in black suites and stark white high 
     collars, in the tangible glare of noontide that 
     came pushing uptown, striking tall highlights 
     from shiny top hats, projecting shadows that 
     looked almost solid . . . . The women by contrast were 
     rigged out in lighter colors, ruffles, contrasting lapels, 
     hats of velvet or straw full of artificial flowers and 
     feathers and ribbons, broad angled brims throwing 
     faces into girlish penumbras as becoming as paint 
     and powder. A visitor from quite far away might 
     almost have imangined two separate species having 
     to do, one with the other . . .AtD 337

Noiselessly I opened the window and sat down on the foot of my bed; hardly
daring to move in case they should hear me from below. Things outside
seemed also fixed in mute expectation, so as not to disturb the moonlight
which, duplicating each of them and throwing it back by the extension,
forwards, of a shadow denser and more concrete than its substance, had
made the whole landscape seem at once thinner and longer, like a map
which, after being folded up, is spread out upon the ground.  What had to
move--a leaf of the chestnut-tree, for instance--moved. But its minute
shuddering, complete, finished to the least detail and with utmost
delicacy of gesture, made no discord with the rest of the scene, and yet
was not merged in it, remaining clearly outlined. Exposed upon this
surface of silence, which absorbed nothing from them, the most distant
sounds, those which must have come from gardens at the far end of the
town, could be distinguished with such exact 'finish' that the impression
they gave of coming from a distance seemed due only to their 'pianissimo'
execution, like those movements on muted strings so well performed by the
orchestra of the Conservatoire that, although one does not lose a single
note, one thinks all the same that they are being played somewhere
outside, a long way from the concert hall, so that all the old
subscribers, and my grandmother's sisters too, when Swann had given them
his seats, used to strain their ears as if they had caught the distant
approach of an army on the march, which had not yet rounded the corner of
the Rue de Trévise. 
Swann's Way, from the unpaginated online text at:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300511.txt 

Behind those two books is "The Automobile Graveyard" by Fernando Arrabal, 
a work that figures in "The Crying of Lot 49". Next to that "The Sacred 
Prostitute" by Nancy Qualls-Corbett, a little background research into the 
legend of the myth of the "Whore of Babylon." On the floor to my right, "Against 
the Day" leaning up against a copy of Led Zepplin II, an open copy of 
Weisenburger"s "A Gravity's Rainbow Companion" [open to the page that includes 
"Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation"], on top of that a first edition 
promo of "Slow Learner".

And so by roundabouts, we finally move into the book and Cyprian.