Sportello - Door/Window/Doc/Pynchon

Mark Kohut markekohut at yahoo.com
Mon Nov 16 11:25:54 CST 2009


It is more than kute.......It has been mentioned, but not in such autobiographical particularity and is SURELY---I won't call you Shirley---a Pynchon resonance.

Sportello also has desk, and counter, branch meanings in definition two. Look deeper into sportello, as someone did which should be in the Archives and one will see that it goes back to a framed perspective around the time of the camera obscura. A framed perspective sounds like a metaphor for an artist's vision at one level, yes?

--- On Mon, 11/16/09, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>
> Subject: Sportello - Door/Window/Doc/Pynchon
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Monday, November 16, 2009, 12:07 PM
> Just continuing to mull some of the
> possible autobiographical angles
> in IV. And browsing the archives, eg.:
> 
> http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139918&sort=thread
> 
> Was the following ever mentioned re. the meaning of
> Sportello? If so,
> apologies. If not, I'm just sort of filing it here for
> future
> reference, rather than claiming any big revelations,
> but.......
> 
> A 'sportello' is a door or a window, or a counter, eg where
> you buy a
> train ticket, right? A door, or a window, or a door which
> is also a
> window. Well, didn't Pynchon's apartment on Manhattan Beach
> have a
> split door, like a stable door, ie. it had a door which was
> also a
> window? Seems so. See here:
> 
> http://www.themodernword.com/Pynchon/pynchon_biography.html
> 
> "Ervin was always generous. He gave no hint of being a
> snit, a snob,
> or even a literati. When you knocked on the bottom half of
> the wood
> Dutch-door of his apartment (the top was normally open to
> the
> elements), Ervin would greet you with a genuine smile and
> fling the
> bottom half of the door open with a welcome".
> 
> Very strong autobiographical clue there, surely? Doc's name
> means
> door/window, and he lives where Pynchon used to live, and
> when Pynchon
> lived there his place had a dutch/stable door, a door that
> was also a
> window, a Sportello in fact.
> 
> Any possibility that Pynchon (a) was unaware of the
> door/window
> meaning of Sportello, and/or (b) forgot the fact that his
> old place -
> which he's waxing nostalgic about - had that style of door?
> Unlikely
> eh?
> 
> In fact, now I think of it, that kind of Dutch door was
> also mentioned
> in Vineland, wasn't it? When Zoyd (who is a lot like Doc)
> first met
> Hector:
> 
> "Down here, a long screened porch faced out over flights of
> rooftops
> descending to the beach. Access from the street was by way
> of a Dutch
> door, whose open top half, that long-ago evening, had come
> to frame
> Hector under a ragged leather hat with a wide brim, peering
> through
> sunglasses, the darkening Pacific in pale-topped crawl
> below."
> 
> Kute, no?
> 



      



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