ATD: unanswered questions in 6/8 pgs. 552/555

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Like Sonny Boy Williamson say, "Don't Start Me to Talkin,"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qlbhEyu09c

 'cause:

. . . .There's always this deliberate distortion of the mode of address 
in Pynchon's presentation of 'The Classics'. Of course, classical 
music , in all its "Margaret Dumont at the Opera" ostentation is 
such an easy, juvenile target for TRP. But it seems much more 
complicated here. Go back to page 552, where Miles Blundell
is discussing the low esteem of the ukulele with Thorn Ryder:

           . . . .traceable, we concluded to the uke's all-but-exclusive 
           employment as a producer of chords---single, timeless 
           events apprehended all at once instead of serially [1]. Notes 
           of a linear melody, up and down a staff, being a record of 
           pitch versus time, to play a melody is to introduce the 
           element of time, and hence of mortality. . . .

While Chopin's E Minor Nocturne is nothing if not a whiff of mortality. . . .

http://tinyurl.com/3bzwer

. . . .what with most of the events in this nocturne consisting of long-held 
notes in the right hand backed up by arpeggiated figures in the 
left---this work introduces the 'element of time' to the world of the 
Chums. Ryder calling the arrangement 'snappy' is all the more 
perverse considering the overwhelming melancholy of the work.
It's also the perfect soundtrack for a land about to be subsumed 
by the horror of industrialised warfare. . . .

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0710&msg=122240&keywords=chopin%20ukulele

. . . .stick with Miles & Thorne:

          Miles, taken by a desolate illumination, reached 
          out his hand, and Thorn, seeing his intention, 
          flinched and backed away, and in the instant 
          Miles understood that there had been no miracle, 
          no brilliant technical coup, in fact no "time travel" 
          at all—that the presence in this world of Thorn 
          and his people had been owing only to some 
          chance blundering upon a shortcut through 
          unknown topographies of Time, enabled 
          somehow by whatever was to happen here, in 
          this part of West Flanders where they stood, by 
          whatever terrible singularity in the smooth flow of 
          Time had opened to them. 

          "You are not here," he whispered in a speculative 
          ecstasy. "Not fully manifest."

          "I wish I were not here," cried Ryder Thorn. "I wish 
          I had never seen these Halls of Night, that I were not 
          cursed to return, and return. You have been so easy 
          to fool—most of you anyway—you are such 
          simpletons at the fair, gawking at your Wonders of 
          Science, expecting as your entitlement all the 
          Blessings of Progress, it is your faith, your pathetic 
          balloon-boy faith." 
          AtD, p. 555

============================

    bandwraith:
     With ATD, I think it is String Theory, which I know
     even less about than the rest of science, but I'm
     still the sucker. Not just the initial "line" of the book,
     but the initial set piece, beginning on p.11, when
     The Chums are forced to deal with Gravity, clues my
     way too receptive mind into thinking this scene has
     a special metaphorical meaning, based on Strings.

Robin:
. . . .not to mention all those ukuleles. . . .


Ah yes, right on cue, and pitch perfect!