ATDTDA (33) - p. 919-21-Frank in Mexico

[kelber at mindspring.com]

p. 919-921:

Frank wakes up from a dream:

“The light didn’t come in exactly the way it was supposed to in churches – not mediated by sacred images of stained glass but by new leafage on trees outside …”

Compare this with the opening of Vineland:

[ cited by Mike Bailey, re: transcendance:

Mike sez:

Like the beginning of Vineland and the moment of Cyprian
(which I kind of tend to see as a deliberate reference back to Zoyd's
awakening) where it dawns upon him suddenly but not suddenly
that he's feeling something different - or better put, that he's not feeling something that he was familiar with... but yes, also not devoid of a feeling that could be described as new.]

“Later than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window …”

Pynchon likes this image of drifting awake to see the light (uncharacteristically) drifting through the leaves.  Zoyd, Frank’s literary predecessor and descendant by marriage, has awakened from a dream where he’s unable to reach something he’s striving for (birds).  Frank’s dream (of horses) is similar.

He’s striving to reach “a concentration of light, something like a city after dark …”

Aspects of Frank’s (somewhat conventional) dream:

1.  It reflects the injury he’s recovering from, a simple bullet wound complicated by his being dragged and trampled by horses.

2.  The light = near death.

3.  The city is some Aztlan or Shambhala-like place that Frank is too earthbound (literally dragged along the ground) to reach.

He wakes up to find the Indian shaman El Espinero, who had once taught him to fly, and will soon help him reach Aztlan in a vision.

It’s Spring, 1911, and Frank’s been wounded fighting with the Madero forces at Casas Grandes.  This was a losing battle in the otherwise victorious fighting that resulted in Madero’s brief presidency.  Madero was a principled good-guy (like Frank), but also weak and naïve (again like Frank?).  He wasn’t aggressive enough in establishing military power (as Frank balked at going after Deuce, even after taking out Sloat).

Here’s a link to a nice essay about Madero:

http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/history/jtuck/jtmaderofi.html

“Young Madero was a supremely atypical product of his culture and environment. Where sons of wealthy ranching families tended to be hard-drinking, steak-devouring, woman-chasing "bloods" completely alienated from things of the intellect and spirit, Francisco didn't drink, abstained from meat and believed in arcane mysticism. Though he was never known to lack courage, Madero's five-foot-two-inch height and shrill, high-pitched voice did not exactly conform to the macho image that Mexicans associate with powerful leaders.”

Stray shows up, having swapped the frilly dress we last saw her in during her gun-running intrigues for practical menswear:  “britches of trail-grade whipcord.”  She’s out of the gun-running business for now and into helping the Madero forces swap POWs for prisoners of the Federales and/or money.  In the case of her current prisoner Rodrigo, Stray’s not above collecting sexual favors as well.

Laura