Sportello - Door/Window/Doc/Pynchon

[John Carvill]

> 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?
>

I hadn't seen 'branch', that's interesting.

Yes, I knew about sportello, as in Durer, perspective, etc.

"A frame fitted with a shutter, which allowed an object to be drawn by
measuring the lines of sight 'by means of three threads'. One of the
threads traversed the line of sight, while the other two defined with
their intersection the picture plane and contemporaneously fixed the
point of intersection between the plane and the line of sight."

 - from 'Picturing Machines 1400-1700' by Wolfgang Lefevre

I really like all that stuff, it's hugely intriguing, and we can spin
off all sorts of musings from it - threads of authorial perspective,
Doc as a window into Pynchon's past, etc. But, for me, it never led
anywhere as concrete as the fact that Pynchon used to live in an
apartment, in Gordita/Manhattan beach, which had a Sportello door. But
both paths converge on the autobiographical theme, I reckon.

Google Books link for 'Picturing Machines' follows (though they never
work for me, but...)

http://books.google.com/books?id=7Pd0qRQB18kC&pg=PA180&lpg=PA180&dq=sportello+perspective&source=bl&ots=vB4XNKa8bF&sig=nwRpH9NDRHsPbjL1xYcQlgLU98Q&hl=en&ei=C6wBS6DOLcj-4AbO4YCADA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=sportello%20perspective&f=false