IVIV (1) Shasta

[Mark Kohut]

what a sea-changed foreecho of the religiousness of surfing riff in IV...

--- On Thu, 8/27/09, Kevin Troy <kevin.troy at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Kevin Troy <kevin.troy at gmail.com>
> Subject: re: IVIV (1) Shasta
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009, 1:45 PM
> I'm coming in late to this IVIV
> biz.  So maybe someone already pointed
> this out.  (I tried my best, Doug, but the search
> functionality on the
> pynchon-l archive is very crude.)
> 
> "When I first caught sight of [Mount Shasta] over the
> braided folds of
> the Sacramento Valley, I was fifty miles away and afoot,
> alone and
> weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been
> weary
> since."
> --John Muir
> 
> (quoted in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Shasta)
> 
> Kinda reminds me of that Kirgiz Light.
> 
> Now I must admit that all through IV, I kept hearing
> "McNasty" anytime
> Shasta's name came up.  B-but Shasta's real last name
> is Fey, which is
> a "real" last name (i.e. you can find Feys in many phone
> books), but
> also suggestive of otherworldliness, being of (or at least
> in tune
> with) faeries, being able to traverse two worlds.  And
> it's also
> reminiscent of Morgan Le Fey, the enchantress in Arthurian
> legend who
> (depending on the source) is either a friend to the Round
> Table, an
> adversary, or both.  The Italian for that name is Fata
> Morgana, which
> has been adopted as a term for a large-scale mirage that
> can appear at
> sea, making it seem like there's a landmass on the horizon
> where there
> isn't one.
> 
> "Shasta Fey" -- rock-solid mountain in the first name, and
> protean,
> nebulous last name.  Best feng shui I've ever seen.
> 
> Cheers,
> Kevin T.
>