V. help and disscusion

[kelber at mindspring.com]

As usual, you've surpassed yourself, Dave.  Glad you're back from the hospital.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jul 24, 2009 2:32 AM
>To: Jordan Hunnicutt <antipusrises at gmail.com>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: V. help and disscusion
>
>On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 12:29 AM, Jordan
>Hunnicutt<antipusrises at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm new to Pynchon as well as the list.  Right now I'm reading V. and loving
>> it.  I'm enamored by the black comedy that's throughout the book.  I would
>> say that I am doing pretty good so far at navigating the dense prose (I
>> equate some chapters as the literary equivalent of being waterboarded) but
>> this passage has me beat.  In my edition it starts on pg. 168 and goes
>> though 169.  It's in chapter 7, part 6 where Godolphin is running from the
>> police and starts with "He turned right and headed toward the Duomo..."
>> That entire paragraph is really intense and I'm having a very hard time
>> following the characters line of thought as to what exactly is going on.
>>
>> Is there anyone that would care to elaborate or explain this.  Any tips
>> would be greatly apreciated.
>
>Wilkommen!  Embarrassingly, I don't have the text @ hand, but thanks
>to the magic of the Internet, here's what's immediately available ...
>
>   "He turned right and headed toward the Duomo. Tourists sauntered
>by, cabs clattered in the street. He felt isolated from a human
>community--even a common humanity--which he had regarded until
>recently as little more than a cant concept which liberals were apt to
>use in making speeches.
>   "He watched the tourists gaping at the Campanile; he watched
>dispassionately without effort, curiously without commitment. He
>wondered at this phenomenon of tourism: what was it drove them to
>Thomas Cook & Son in ever-increasing flocks every year to let
>themselves in for the Campagna’s fevers, the Levant’s squalor, the
>septic foods of Greece? To return to Ludgate Circus at the desolate
>end of every season having caressed the skin of each alien place, a
>peregrine or Don Juan of cities but no more able to talk of any
>mistress’s heart than to cease keeping that interminable Catalogue,
>that non picciol’ libro.
>   "Did he not owe it to them, the lovers of skins, not to tell them
>about Vheissu, not even to let them suspect the suicidal fact that
>below the glittering integument of every foreign land there is a hard
>dead-point of truth and that in all cases, it is the same kind of
>truth, can be phrased in identical words?"
>
>http://www.art-damage.com/nostyle/archives/000121.html
>
>The person who kindly even if albeit unknowingly posted that for us
>glosses this thus:"This bit takes place around 1905--a retired,
>well-traveled British agent is suddenly outcast and hunted, and tries
>to find a way to get out of Florence and disappear in the Italian
>countryside."
>
>I couldn't get either Google Books or amazon.com to cough up anything
>further there ...
>
>http://books.google.com/books?id=jqS2pmUIfOAC
>
>http://www.amazon.com/V-Perennial-Classics-Thomas-Pynchon/dp/0060930217
>
>"Page Not Available.  Some pages are not included in this book sample"
>
>... so I hope that's enough to go on for anyone casually listening in.
>Otherwise ....
>
>http://fortunaty.net/text/textz/textz/pynchon_thomas_v.txt
>
>I'm catching up after a week or so of institutionalization, so I'll
>have to come back to this for my own two cents worth, but these might
>help at least with sorting a few things out, even if only the factual
>and/or otherwise mundane, at least ...
>
>http://www.thomaspynchon.com/v/alpha/a.html
>http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=A
>http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_7
>
>I'm not finding anything  immediately applicable, at least, in the
>List archives ...
>
>http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>... but might I suggest, at least in part, that what we have here is
>"The Old Baedeker Trick Again" ...
>
>http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Baedeker
>http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/sources.html
>http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72939
>http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=64888
>http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72946
>http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0801&msg=123940
>
>Oh, hey, speaking of Eric Bulson ...
>
>http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0110&msg=61694
>
>And then there's Vheissu ...
>
>http://www.thomaspynchon.com/v/extra/vheissu.html
>http://www.thomaspynchon.com/v/extra/eti.html#vheissu
>http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Vheissu
>
>Hope something there is at least of some help, somehow ...
>