Sportello - Door/Window/Doc/Pynchon

[Joseph Tracy]

As a maker and fixer of windows which I think of as doors this does  
ring true. Ding dong. I too have decided to re read GR, partly  
because it is now obvious that 70s LA  and the US military industrial  
complex was one of the key targets of his Karmic  missile launch.
On Nov 16, 2009, at 12:07 PM, John Carvill wrote:

> 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?