AtD (37) p. 1055, Kafkaesque dream, guilt, paranoia, Where is LAPD?

[Mark Kohut]

Laura,

Thanks for correcting and filling in my shoddy "scholarship"....(it was so bad, one can't call it that).

Vertigo was the Hitchcock film I was trying to remember but I did not stop to get right...yes, spiral staircase inside a stone tower, yes....

Besides all the other rightness, I agree with your remarks about some "essential" evil in Deuce. 

A-and, he is at least a killer and at least in the dream feels like "there were others' [ dead women he woke up next to].

Mark





--- On Mon, 7/28/08, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> From: kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com>
> Subject: Re: AtD (37) p. 1055, Kafkaesque dream, guilt, paranoia, Where is LAPD?
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Monday, July 28, 2008, 1:02 PM
> The Spiral Staircase (1945)
> 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038975/ 
> 
> isn't a Hitchcock film, and, although many of its
> scenes take place in the dark, its characters aren't
> stock film noir characters.  It's about a serial killer
> who attacks disabled women.  If Deuce is now a serial
> killer, the reference makes sense.  The Hitchcock classic
> Vertigo also contains a staircase in a stone tower, a kind
> of squared-off spiral staircase.  The Nancy Drew book Is
> The Hidden Staircase (not at all spiral, no murder
> involved).
> 
> It's interesting how Deuce makes the transition from
> Pulp Western bad guy to Film Noir bad guy.  It implies that
> there's something static about evil (if not evil,
> "badness") -- it's not just a socio-historic
> construct (sorry, I'm really beginning to blather --
> need caffeine).  Perhaps the next incarnation of Deuce is
> Brock Vond?  Maybe a character in a 70s TV show?  Anyone up
> for a group read of Vineland next?
> 
> Laura
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> >Sent: Jul 28, 2008 10:34 AM
> >To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >Subject: AtD (37) p. 1055, Kafkaesque dream, guilt,
> paranoia, Where is LAPD?
> >
> >P 1055
> >Deuce's dream is kafkaesque? He is assumed to be
> guilty,---"hell, so did he [think he was
> guilty]",  "there were others", although we
> do not know of what---An inquiry by a cadre of Californian
> youth.........paranoia again.
> >
> >The dwelling in which the dream takes place has a
> spiral staircse inside a round stone wall......Stone walls
> as in the old European villages and a spiral staircase as
> in twisting Hollywood noir movies [famous hitchcock one?].
> [Not that TRP is so alluding but I remember the first nancy
> Drew mystery I ever read, "The Mystery of The Spiral
> Staircase"..
> >
> >"The early light coming through it [the dkylight]
> a dusty rose color".  That early morning light motif,
> first noticed (maybe; not sure) by Mike B. It is there in
> GR, Vineland, earlier in AtD and elsewhere.
> >"there is a crack in everything [even the
> darkness], that's how the light gets
> in."---Leonard Cohen [except for the bracket part]. 
> >
> >Sinister Californian youth..brilliant as arc lamps
> (very negative in TRPs world, of course)...."unlimited
> power" [baddest shit].......ramping up Deuce's
> paranoia. he asks Where is the LAPD?, which shows, with
> another sly Pynchon joke, how bad it must feel.
> >
> >Deuce hasn't lived an exemplary life, to say the
> least, but is this section to also show 1) he has an
> unconscious conscience, at least?  
> >2) Hollywood--the dream factory, as it has been
> called-- creates fear/paranoia no matter who we are? 
> >
> > 
> >
> >
> >
> >