"A screaming" - question to native speakers

[eojorav at gmail.com]

Pretty much my thoughts exactly. 

------Original Message------
From: Paul Mackin
Sender: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org
To: Pynchon List
Subject: Re: "A screaming" - question to native speakers
Sent: Jun 30, 2009 09:58

I wasn't sure I understood Janos' question.

Semantically  of course we don't know yet whether the screaming was
from a human, another primate, or was a scream-like sound generated by
an inanimate object.

But syntactically (grammatically), the construction is completely
straightforward.  A verbal noun (gerund) preceded by an indefinite
article.

P

2009/6/30 Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>:
> I have to choose option #3.  It seems to me to be as onomatopoetic as
> it is anything else.  It is a particular screaming only after we read
> on.  Its initial signified meaning is unknown, so it might be any
> screaming, physical, metaphysical or hallucinatory.  That ambiguity is
> a part of the greatness of it as an opening phrase.  The first thing
> that happens to the reader is that he (and / or she) is cast out of
> certainty like a progenitor from Paradise.
>
> 2009/6/29 János Székely <miksaapja at gmail.com>:
>> I'm writing an essay on translating GR and I'm having doubts "after
>> the fact": Would you read "a screaming" in the first sentence as
>> - pronoun + countable noun, or as
>> - a [kind of] screaming,
>> or is it ambiguous?
>>
>> Thx
>> János
>>
>>
>
>