All aboard

[Monte Davis]

Mark Kohut sez:

>When I was reading this book, I was self-convinced Littell had internalized
(out of deep respect) Pynchon's work or at least GR. 

I thought at first you might be overdoing it, but now that I've read on to
Aue's hallucinations -- the dirigible across the Volga, the mad scientist's
cone-shaped earth and plan to go over the Edge -- I think he may have
stirred in AtD as well.

--- On Fri, 12/4/09, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
> Subject: All aboard
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, December 4, 2009, 6:22 AM
> We've been here before, Evacuating,
> yo-yoing, remodeling Rocky Mountain
> trestles. But here's a _Sicherheitsdienst_ officer just
> starting to feel at
> home in 1942:
> 
> "My first night in Stalingrad, I still remember, I had
> another metro dream.
> It was a station with many levels, but they communicated
> with each other, a
> huge labyrinth of steel beams, footbridges, steep metal
> ladders, spiral
> staircases. The trains arrived at the platforms and left
> them in a deafening
> racket. I didn't have a ticket and was terrified of being
> checked by the
> station police. I went down a few levels and slipped into a
> train that was
> leaving the station and then dive-bombed almost vertically
> on its tracks;
> below, it slowed down, reversed its direction and, passing
> by the platform
> again without stopping, plunged in the other direction,
> into a vast abyss of
> light and harsh noise."
> 
> _The Kindly Ones_, Jonathan Littell, tr. Charlotte Mandell
> 
> 
> 
> 
>