atddta 32:summary part 4 of 4

[Michael Bailey]

grladams wrote:

>  It's worth noting the status of this section of the book, and the book in
>  general, and by my own interpretation, history itself at the time as
>  Pynchon savors it, as being a sum of delays, setbacks, tangents, flipflops,
>  as if a historical hurtling forward motion switched rails, a pause button
>  got pushed, whilst intermission music or such played, what do you think?
>

history as antithetical to personal life, romance, etc?

Mulciber gives Kit the business card that will hook him back into
the evil machinery - but his inclinations and the story he and Dalley
are trying to start militate against him using the business card...
(shades of the business card in _Vineland_)

he would ordinarily have tucked it into a pocket and lost it, eg,
but because his compassion made him intercede (apparently
unsuccessfully) against the CUP guys he gets on their bad list
and winds up misusing his talents in the service of the war machine...
but only because of the consequences of his attempted good deed

Kit's math talent getting co-opted (again, dammit - can't the kid focus?)
foreshadowing how the German rocket club's vision was subsumed
into the V Weapon program

but the important thing from a person-centered view is how
Kit would have lost the card in the normal course of things
and, I suppose, how he's going to focus on the experience of
the dive (not on relishing the slaughter of the strikers in the
way that Vibe gloated on Tancredi's slaughter)

Like Cyprian, Kit kinda walks out on Dalley - and like
Cyprian loses Y to an American, Kit loses D to an Englishman
(for a bit) - in retribution for that choice
Kit and Dalley shared a sort of understanding, though,
while Yashmeen's feeling of abandonment was more total ---
so Cyprian never does win back fully into her good graces