ATDTDA (38)Pink Tabs, cover

[Mark Kohut]

brillaint on the cover, I think.


--- On Wed, 7/9/08, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: ATDTDA (38)Pink Tabs, cover
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2008, 9:32 AM
> In the Craft, we pray to an imminent goddess; she permeates 
>           all walks of life, within and without us. We do
> not just pray to 
>           her "above" but also
> "within." When patriarchal religions talk 
>           about the "grace" that comes to those
> who pray, they are 
>           talking about the same things we did thousands of
> years 
>           before them.
> 
>           Cultivate your deeper mind and be well.
> 
>           Zsuzsanna Budapest. "The Holy Book of
> Women's Mysteries"
> 
> So I start the flashbacks before the trip is quite over.
> 
> I finally figured out the Pink Tabs—those passages that
> reminded 
> me of The Crying of Lot 49 and Tris/Trystero. It's the
> intersection of the 
> Occult and the Encrypted, some of the backstory of heretics
> forced to
> encrypt their messages in order to save their skins.
> 
> Let's start with the cover, shall we? The book's
> title is seen through a 
> hunk of clear, optical grade Calcite. The topmost
> layer—the present—
> has some sort of stamp of the Tibetian Chamber of Commerce.
> We see
> the three different fonts representing the layers of time
> in three different 
> styles of typeface. Pynchon's novels always have
> Un-named
> characters driving the book's plots, both literary
> plots and and the plots
> of crimes being committed. Somehow, murmuring in the
> background of
> Gravity's Rainbow I sense Crowley. Lurking in the
> background of
> Against the Day is Einstein. The overarching theme of the
> book is light 
> itself and Against the Day's cover [the first printing]
> encrypts a paradox
> or two—if light is both a wave and a particle, Iceland
> Spar demonstrates
> one particle becoming two. Pynchon works from the notion
> that
> those two particles are now running along different time
> axes. And there 
> you are—different time axes, the notion that there are
> other presents, 
> other futures we may or may not be living in.
> 
> One of those other futures is Shambhala, earthly paradise.
> 
> That stamp on the cover of Against the Day is bilocated.
> 
> The illustration on the stamp is from about the time of the
> Tungusga 
> Event, but the inscription of "Tibetan Chamber of
> Commerce" is
> from the present. The significance of that stamp will
> become quite 
> apparent later, in August, when we are on the Rue du
> Départ:
> 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091874/
> 
> http://www.last.fm/music/Anouar+Brahem/_/Rue+du+départ
> 
> http://www.hotel-paris-waldorf.com/hotel-waldorf-english/location.html
> 
> http://outofthewoodsnow.blogspot.com/2008/06/rue-du-dpart.html