AtD, another violet allusion from another great TRP influence

kelber at mindspring.com kelber at mindspring.com
Fri May 30 09:42:38 CDT 2008


Good finds, once again, David!

I had the phrase "Congo violet" in my consciousness somewhere, and made a half-assed attempt to google-search it, but all I came up with was a bird, the Violet-backed Hyliota, which lives in the general area of the Congo.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>
>Sent: May 30, 2008 10:25 AM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: RE: AtD, another violet allusion from another great TRP influence
>
>
>Continuing to make my case that the threesome was sent to the Balkans for reasons not entirely military: 
>
>The Pynchon Grid notes that Ljubica = violet (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~ksgruesz/ltel190f/PynchonGrid.htm)!
>
>Also, from http://www.behindthename.com/name/ljubica: The name Ljubica comes "from the Slavic element lub meaning 'love' combined with a diminutive suffix. It can also come from Serbo-Croatian ljubicica meaning 'violet'."
>
>Sidenote: on page 349, Dally finds herself dressed in "Congo violet! with plaid trimming! Ahhh!"
>
>________________________________
>
>Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 03:55:36 -0700
>From: markekohut at yahoo.com
>Subject: RE: AtD, another violet allusion from another great TRP influence
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>
>
>Mimeographing was invented by Edison! and named by a guy/company named A.B, Dick
>
>& Co.  late 1800s
>
>Mark Kohut  wrote:
>
>
>mimeographing certainly dovetails with the proliferation of maps we encounter here...
>
>When did mimeograph machines happen? (not that we have to limit TRP to THAT!)
>
>
>
>maybe even that line is simply made with carbon paper?....(has that been around since right after the invention of the typewriter? late 1800s---or even earlier?)
>
>David Payne  wrote:
>
>
>On Thu, 29 May 2008 (12:06:10 -0400), Laura (kelber at mindspring.com) wrote:
>
>> Could the violet document be a mimeograph? Still have fond childhood memories of inhaling that purple ink!
>
>Yes! I think that you're on to something here! (Not to discount Mark's exploration of Pynchon's symbolic use of the color--Pynchon's certainly able to fold symbolism into description.)
>
>Which makes me wonder if this is perhaps a real mimeographed map that Pynchon found buried in some archives somewhere.
>
>Something like this: http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/balkan/Maps/3.jpg
>
>Though that map certainly doesn't fit the description quite right ... I still think that the map might really be the Congo. De Bottle was concerned with protecting anarchist from themselves and I wonder he let Cyprian jump to the conclusion that the map was the Balkans, perhaps somehow foreseeing that this would lead the threesome to the place they needed to be. (At the same time, the map does seem to function a forecast of upcoming military events, so....)
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