Re: IVIV (1) "Uphill and invisible… p4

[David Morris]

I agree that this passage stood out as particularly poetic, and quite
brief for Pynchon.  And the description of cars' echoing out to oil
tankers paralleling ships of the past (probably colonial) hearing
animals off exotic coasts, is haunting.

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 4:17 PM, alice
wellintown<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Doug,
>
> Glad you mentioned this little passage. It stuck out as I was reading
> and re-reading and I did get a very sad feeling from it. The use of
> the term "business" here, as in money-business is conflated with
> sexual or procreation-business and this struck me as an echo of the
> sad theme of this work. Also, as the crew are working on oil tankers
> and oil is destroying the environment of the wild life and their
> habitat, it seems sad that the firts major machine of
> industrial-consumer capitalism, that automobile that runs down Myrtle,
> the Virgin Flower of the Wastland or Valley of Ashes in Fitzgerald's
> Gatsby, communicates with the men sliding along on the oily sea. The
> exotic caosts are as the dodo.
>
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Doug Millison<dougmillison at comcast.net> wrote:
>> "Uphill and invisible, traffic out on the boulevard to and from the freeway
>> uttered tuneful exhaust phrases which went echoing out to sea, where the
>> crews of oil tankers sliding along hearing them, could have figured it for
>> wildlife taking care of nighttime business on an exotic coast." p4
>>
>> This wouldn't feel out of place in a Chandler novel.
>>
>> Love the way the parallel structures carry me away:
>>
>> …out on the boulevard…
>> …out to sea…
>> …on an exotic coast.
>>
>> Disclaimer:  Our family had a dog we kids named Tuneful, back in that early
>> 1960s day, for her musical talents.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>