Atdtda27: You people really just believe everything you're taught, 776-778

[Bekah]

I'm in awe of Paul Nightingale and would love to see those his  
incredible posts archived somewhere separate and special.   I hope he  
(or someone) is looking into that.

Bekah

On Jun 19, 2008, at 11:11 PM, grladams at teleport.com wrote:

> I think it's perfect that one of us has become stuck in time, back  
> in a
> chapter of a prior pathway. I read all these posts and marvel at  
> the detail
> and loving care that Paul Nightengale puts into this seemingly  
> endless read
> he's on.
>
>
>
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From: Paul Nightingale isread at btinternet.com
> Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:24:50 +0100
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Atdtda27: You people really just believe everything you're  
> taught,
> 776-778
>
>
> Riverbanks replace maps to guide Kit and Prance in their search for
> Magyakan, "everywhere, and mysterious--a heroic being with  
> unearthly gifts",
> a description that sees him likened to the taiga. There is a loss  
> of the
> overview provided by maps; so one is always here, perhaps, although  
> what
> follows is a form of mapping that will challenge Kit's subjectivity.
>
> Reference to the taiga draws attention to its spread across  
> continents, the
> way it ignores political (ie human) boundaries; and what follows is an
> account of myth's similar capacity for travel. Or resistance. For  
> Prance the
> taiga represents darkness, aka Shamanism, "the common enemy" (777)  
> that
> religion, ie organised religion, must try to "eradicate". Authority  
> and
> resistance-as-ignorance, defined as the practices of "primitive  
> people".
>
> Kit suggests that Agdy/Agdi/Ogdai is "just the name of whoever  
> sends these
> iron things down" etc (776), a reading alternative to Prance's  
> emphasis on
> "conflation" (which in turn signifies ignorance, or myths that  
> travel, a
> localised ignorance of the controlling overview). Cf. the earlier  
> stories
> surrounding the so-called Kieselguhr Kid, who might or might not be  
> one
> person. If indeed the Kid is Webb, succeeded by Reef and/or Frank,  
> then this
> is another area of Traverse life that excludes Kit.
>
> Kit's function here is to provoke Prance through interrogation. His
> introspective account of the terrain has given way to a role as  
> interviewer,
> all of which involves mouthing the party line: "... no 'state  
> religion' in
> the U.S.A. ..." etc (777). This is a clash of histories,  
> alternative big
> pictures, Kit offering "it's guaranteed in the Constitution", Prance
> countering with a critique ("one long religious war ..." etc) that
> deconstructs the (localised--what Americans believe in) myth of the
> constitution. The exchange concludes with an attempt on Kit's part  
> to offer
> a personal alternative: "Guess I'll have to go to Cambridge and get  
> smart"
> (778), recalling and replaying the trajectory he did follow in  
> going to
> Yale. Prance, referring to his own former self as "a religious  
> youth" notes
> that "[i]t might easily have taken other forms".
>
> One thinks of another journey undertaken by Kit, with Colfax to see  
> Tesla;
> returning to New York, Colfax tells Kit he could never successfully  
> hide
> from his father: "Sooner or later you find you're trusting people you
> shouldn't ..." (329). What Prance here calls "these  
> conflations" (776) is
> similar to the operation of the Twin Vibes. According to Prance,  
> people
> believe whatever shamans tell them: "it's like Americans, only  
> different"
> (777). At the end of the section/chapter Kit "recall[s] the purity,  
> the
> fierce, shining purity of Lake Baikal, and how he had felt standing  
> in the
> wind" (778). Repetition in this sentence emphasises the impact the  
> scene had
> on him as the chapter opened (768). A pristine beauty was  
> accompanied there
> by a "certainty" that has been succeeded, or replaced, in the  
> narrative by a
> "bickering numbness of spirit" (778). At the end of the chapter he  
> recalls
> Hassan, whose inscrutable 'otherness' proved less confrontational than
> Prance's mockery.
>
>
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