Sportello - Door/Window/Doc/Pynchon

[Mark Kohut]

 > There are many grids in
> GR.  The most famous one probably being Slothrop's
> map.
> 
> Indeed. And I think there was probably quite a lot of
> relevant stuff
> in Against the Day - the Venetian sequences, for instance.
> 
> > I think in IV the most pervasive sportello is the
> framed pixelated
> > grid of the TV.
> 
> Hmmmmmm. I like the connection between grids, perspective,
> sportellos,
> and photography. IV as a 'snapshot' of Pynchon's
> environment and era
> whilst writing GR, which itself was, in part, 'about' that
> same
> environment and era. That and the mental image of Pynchon,
> leaning out
> of the upper half of his Sportello-like door, in Manhattan
> Beach,
> watching that environement and era go by.


We have been so wonderfully precise in working out some resonances to Pynchon's Sportello,--exciting stuff, I say--- that I want to try to push the precision:

Yes, all those connections between grids, sportellos, perspective might be like a "snapshot" metaphorically meant, but it seems to me TRP is clearly adding resonance from a time way before photography: the camera obscura, with mirrors--lots in his work--and reflections and angles. 

More depth charges of meaning, perhaps: his senses of what we (as human beings) have lost are often illuminated with perspectives from history, often back centuries; and his sense of when History went wrong places perspectives further back in time for understanding. 
>