VL-IV p133 a long sentence nobody has canonized...

[Michael Bailey]

you know how criticism tends to erect certain long sentences in
Pynchon's books, claiming the text, like the flag at Iwo Jima...
(just a fanciful way to say critics and reviewers of course excerpt,
not that there's anything wrong with that, and some passages do stand
out) ----- anyway, the long one on 133 doesn't strike me as one that
will get excerpted, exegesized, canonized.

Maybe it isn't quite ready for prime time, maybe it doesn't savor
enough of philosophy or politics...
but it is rather lengthy:

"The car radio, tuned to KFWB, was playing the Doors' "People Are
Strange (When You're a Stranger)" as she injected herself into the
slow lane of the eastbound freeway and settled in, hating to let any
of it go, Banning, the dinosaurs, the Palm Springs turnoff, Indio,
across the Mojave, to be redreamed in colors pale but intense, with
unnaturally fine sand blowing in plumes across the sun, baby-blue
shadows in the folds of the dunes, a pinkish sky - holding on, letting
go, redreaming each night stop the less easterly places she'd been in
all day, coming slowly unstuck, leaving for the United States, trying
not to get emotional but still hanging on the rearview mirror's single
tale of recedings and vanishing points as we hang on looks our lovers
give."

It'd be easy enough to exclude this sentence (...this book...) from
serious consideration, just cut it off like Bill O'Reilly and the 9-11
conspiracy theorist...

but for those of us inspired (or taken in) by Vineland, Pynchon's
umbra of genius is enough to take the sentence on faith.  I've never
tried to unpack it, really.  Just clucked a little at its length and
"pissed on through" like Eula in Vineland.  But doesn't it kind of
deal with emotions, characterization, feelings, the stuff Pynchon is
(in)famous for not doing?

1) soooo... Ralph first approached DL in a coffeeshop in Eugene.
Oregon.  What was she doing up there?  We don't know.
All we know is how she was feeling -----
p 130 - "I had been spending years and years of my life with these
fantasies of taking revenge on Brock Vond."
besides relating DL to Zoyd ("This theory at least had kept Zoyd from
lying around hatching plots to assassinate Hector..." 29) in spelling
out her character ("In her pachinko playing...Noboru...had detected an
advanced ruthlessness of spirit" 122)
-- so the "looks our lovers give" in my non-canonical long sentence
aren't fresh ones...
----- however she was making a living, she'd been on the West Coast
for quite some time, still hung up - whether in the Platonic love of
soldierly-camaraderie, or something a little kinkier - on Frenesi...

2) Pynchon, himself, of course, apparently has changed coasts once or
twice. In fact perhaps DL more than Zoyd is a repository for Pynchon's
projection of self?  (speculation)

3) "People Are Strange (When You're a Stranger)" is one of the more
palatable tunes in the Doors' oeuvre (for me, most of it is just too
nasty and aggro, which of course makes it a good range of tunes for
DL's karmic DJ to choose from, and I'm playing it on YouTube right
now...good song for disaffected aspiring-ex-ninja...)

4) hating to let any of it go, Banning (wtf is Banning?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banning,_California small town, Indian
reservation nearby, getting up in the mountains, elevation 2349 ft)
the dinosaurs (I always figured this was La Brea?)
Indio - elevation -13 feet
across the Mojave - desert scene
"holding on, letting go" - "coming slowly unstuck" - "leaving for the
United States"

5) "trying not to get emotional but still hanging on the rearview
mirror's single tale of recedings and vanishing points as we hang on
looks our lovers give."
probably never gonna be canonical, but I'll be dreaming and redreaming
that clause for a few days...



-- 
--
"Frenesi's eyes, even on the aging ECO stock, took over the frame, a
defiance of blue unfadable."