notes reading Oil! with ATD comparisons

[grladams at teleport.com]

These are my notes, unless quoted it's my shorthand to myself, which I took
reading Oil! the other day: violet included
(Bunny's) 
"His school's student body dumped into one common garbage can socialists &
communists, and syndicalists and anarchists, communist anarchists, and
anarchist syndicalists, social revolutionaries and social democrats,
populists, progressives, single taxers, non-partisan leaguers, pacifists,
pragmatists, altruists, vegetarians, anti-vivesectionists and opponents of
capital murder" p. 266 

This is hyperbole. OBA may have figured out a way to describe it
eliptically. Made me think of Kit and that one German 'friend' of his way
back in the 500's somewhere.
Bunny essentially a two dimensional character. 
-----

Oil refinery-likened to coney island--it's electric lights, violet tinged
white steam rising from it--smelled sweet (I lived in Houston and can
almost remember the strange caramelly taste of money.) p.276 

Reminded me of the total sensation platter of (smell included) technlology
in GR
---
p. 278 Death train moved up and down the trans-siberian railway as a way to
describe pathway of munitions -because the Bolsheviks could not repay the
debts ("It was a private expedition, sent to run the railroad for the
bankers." (271) Stories of postwar US military assignments in Irkutsk
battling Japs as they defended "White Russians". Puts new spin on Railway
concessions. Also, reminds me to order a white russian when I go bowling
tomorrow. 

Difference in writing style: Pynchon's is like a movie from today where you
can't even absorb it all there is such subtle dialogue and hidden symbols,
you have to see it again to really 'get' it. Oil! is like socially aware
people in the theater ; on the stage, ten years after the action making
broadside stereotypical tableaus.
----------

-Jill


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