IVIV (1) The Street Light

[Mark Kohut]

street lights, unlike natural light, are bad shit in Pynchon's world.

one of the earliest uses of V as image-metaphor in V. is to describe the V-shaped street lights disappearing..............

V. herself, getting more inanimate as she ages in V. as we know, was born in the year the first street lights were lit.

There are the crackling arc-lights in GR....and the stone-blue lights of the Vacuum. 

Telluride and Aspen and other places are condemned via their street lights (and many other things) as they ruin the evening redness in the West..

Street lights are electric lights, created via the industrial revolution.
Remember Vibe's HQ on Pearl St in NYCity.....where first electric company was?

Under the street lights where Doc And Shasta are is the exact opposite of under the moonlight.......

--- On Mon, 8/24/09, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: IVIV (1) The Street Light
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Monday, August 24, 2009, 3:47 PM
> "They stood in the street light ..."
> (IV, Ch. 1, p.1)
> 
> http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/PENGN-EMS/InherentVice._V218759443_.pdf
> 
> 
> "street light"
> 
> Like Vineland, and Gravity's Rainbow, here a Pynchon book
> begins with
> light coming through a window. Also like Vineland, the
> sentence
> structure and rhythm is just slightly jarring - that '...in
> the street
> light through the kitchen window...' seeming to echo
> Vineland: "Later
> than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted
> awake in
> sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window,
> with a
> squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof." In both
> cases,
> it's just a little odd that Pynchon doesn't refer to the
> light 'that
> shone' through the window. And that creeping fig makes an
> appearance
> on page 33 of Inherent Vice.
> 
> http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#Page_1
> 
> Cf. ...
> 
> Neon signs of red and green
> Shine upon the friendly scene,
> Welcoming you in from the sea.  (V., Ch. 1, p. 1)
> 
> Cf. ...
> 
> http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/CoverImagePopup/0,,9781594202247,00.html
> 
> http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=G#greenmagenta
>