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

[bandwraith at aol.com]

Robin:

". . . .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 Blundellis discussing the low esteem of the ukulele
with Thorn Ryder..."

He seems to get quite a kick out of conceiving of "high
culture" through the medium of popular culture, and
demonstrating their equality, while never quite allowing
them to merge. What happened at Flanders might have
been a singularity in time, where the various threads of
culture were no no longer capable of maintaining there
separation. Whatever euphroes of social distinction that
had been holding the strands of civilization apart, failed
at Flanders. With the full emergence of industrialized war,
there was a new chord struck in time, with its own
reasons for being, not traceable back to what had been
previously taken for granted- a multiplication of effect
not calculable from any known causes.