TMoP - Chapter Two - The cemetery

[Mark Kohut]

looks like great looking....no one mentions it......1865 Handbook at Google Books is words from the time.


--- On Thu, 9/25/08, Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> From: Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: TMoP - Chapter Two - The cemetery
> To: "Richard Ryan" <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Pynchon-L" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008, 10:03 AM
> I thought I looked and looked and could find no evidence of
> a  
> cemetery ever having been on Yelagin Island.   Anyone else?
> 
> Bekah
> 
> On Sep 24, 2008, at 7:40 PM, Richard Ryan wrote:
> 
> > "They take the little ferryboat to Yelagin
> Island, which he has not  
> > visited for years.  But for the two old women in
> black, they are  
> > the only passengers.  It is a cold, misty day.  As
> they approach, a  
> > dog, grey and emaciated, begins to lope up and down
> the jetty,  
> > whining eagerly.  The ferryman swings a boathook at
> it; it retreats  
> > to a safe distance.  Isle of dogs, he thinks: are
> there packs of  
> > them skulking among the trees, waiting for the
> mourners to leave  
> > before they begin their digging?"
> >
> > To quote (from memory) William Carlos Williams's
> introduction to  
> > HOWL: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are going through
> Hell."
> >
> > By page seven of TMoP, Coetzee has already deployed a
> set of  
> > allusions which will continue to resonate throughout
> the book: to  
> > Dante, to Rilke, and, of course, always and
> everywhere, to the  
> > historical double of the book's fictional
> protagonist, Dostoevsky.
> >
> > The visit to the Land of the Dead in the second
> chapter - invoking  
> > immediately so many classic visits to the Underworld
> (Orpheus,  
> > Odysseus, Aeneas, Leopold Bloom....), and accompanied
> by all the  
> > necessary signs (ferryman, dogs, widows) establishes a
> re-occuring  
> > pattern in the novel: the Living in search of the
> Dead.
> >
> > I'd suggest we'll find, as the novel
> progresses, that TMoP is -  
> > among other things, but perhaps pre-eminently - a
> mediation on  
> > Necromancy, on way that the survivors attempt to
> resurrect the  
> > people they've lost.
> >
> >